


Pie and Consqeuences

by SteelRigged



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Angst and Humor, But I'm still polishing, Cannon compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, Daddy Sam Winchester, Destiel if you squint - Freeform, Dysfunctional Family, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Family Drama, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Finished, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Fluff and Humor, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, Mostly Cannon Compliant, Near Future, Parent Sam Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Protective Sam Winchester, Psychic Violence, Sam Winchester-centric, Sam-Centric, Scooby Doo References, Sexual Tension, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Soulless Sam Winchester, Threats of Violence, Uncle Dean, protective!Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-04-23 18:34:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 37,942
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4887460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SteelRigged/pseuds/SteelRigged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean’s eyebrows were popping off his face. He looked at Sam, who had pie falling off his nose, and swallowed a smile. "You're getting slow, Sam," Dean said, and patted his brother on the shoulder.</p><p>Sam wiped pie from his cheeks and chin. Veronica's rage had caught him off guard. She was one of the few people from his past he was still on good terms with. At least he thought they had been on good terms. At least neutral terms. Not pie in the face terms.</p><p>“Oh Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Dean muttered, glowing with pleasure. “Don’t worry. I’ve been there. You probably deserved it.”  </p><p>(This is mostly compliant with current cannon, but it takes place slightly in the future. Lots of talk about season six and Soulless Sam)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lemon Meringue Pie with Passion-Fruit

**Author's Note:**

> Insert the normal spiel here. I don't own the Winchesters or any of the characters from Supernatural. This is a tranformative work and I am not making any money off of it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam wiped pie from his nose and chin. Veronica's rage had caught him off guard. She was one of the few people from his past he was still on good terms with. At least he thought they had been on good terms. At least neutral terms. Not pie in the face terms.
> 
> “Oh Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Dean muttered, glowing with pleasure. “Don’t worry. I’ve been there. You probably deserved it.”

"So has Cas gotten back to you yet?" Sam asked Dean in the elevator. 

"No," Dean said, peeved. "He's been super cagey about this whole job. I mean he brings us in, then he tells us to wait, and then he goes radio silent even as there is another attack. It's just weird." 

"You think he's hiding somthing?" 

"I don't know dude." Dean cracked his neck. "Yes. No. Maybe. He was going on about reconnaissance and wanting to be 100% sure. I'll tell you what, Sammy, there is something here that he thinks is going to make us angry." Dean pushed the button for the 7th floor again. "We should be moving faster, not slower." 

Sam nodded, then sighed. "Let's go rip the band-aid off." 

The door to the elevator opened there was a pretty dark haired woman holding a meringue pie standing on the landing. Dean smiled, and gave her a slight up nod. "That for us? You shouldn't have"

The woman yelped and almost dropped the pie. When she caught it, she pushed her glasses back up her nose staring at them agape. She had a bobbed haircut that came to just under her chin, a heart shape face with full cheeks, and bright red-delicious lips that were quivering slightly. She could have been a hipster snow white. She was even dressed for it; wearing a blue A-line skirt and tight yellow cardigan embroidered with red and black octopus tentacles. 

Sam blinked. His eyebrows shooting up in surprise. He tripped over his feet slightly as he rushed to get out in front of his brother.

“Ronnie?” Sam asked, a slight note of panic in his voices. “Wow, it’s good to see you," he scanning over her head to see if anyone else was in the vicinity. Luckily it was clear. Sam smiled a tense smile. "What have you been up too?" he asked without making eye contact, instead Sam took Veronica's arm and led her gently into a corner. Dean rolled his eyes and took look out.

"Listen, I know its been forever," Sam started, stopping short when he finally look at her face. He'd forgotten how stunningly blue Ronnie's eyes were, behind her black frames. Tropical reef blue. He swallowed. "Wow, you look...good." 

The hairs on the back of Sam's neck prickled slightly. Ronnie looked panicked. She shouldn't look panicked. Ronnie had loved him in college. Panic was _exactly_ the _wrong_ reaction for her to have. She was supposed to squeal in excitement. She was supposed to give him bright, giddy smiles. Even leaping hugs. This was not the Ronnie he remembered. 

The thought passed through his brain that she might be a shape-shifter, or "off" in some other way, but she was wearing silver jewelry against her skin. At least it looked silver. Sam remembered that Ronnie's skin turned green when she wore fake metals. There were ways around that, but they required dedication. Sam regretted not having any holy water on hand. 

Dean cleared his throat. Bringing Sam back into the moment. He dropped his hold on Veronica's arm.

"Can you go home for the day?" Sam blurted. "I'm sure you heard about some of the funny stuff that's been going on around here--the people getting beaten up and blaming it on shadowy ape monsters--which is crazy, but..." He had the sudden urge to wipe his hands off on the sides of his pants. He hadn't been this uncomfortable with a lie in years. And he hadn't even lied yet. He took a breath and looked her straight in the eyes. "Please, trust me. There is something dangerous here. We're going to take care of it. But you should go home."

Ronnie tilted her head and made a snorting, gulping, coughing, noise. It was probably shock. Maybe doubt. Sam swallowed uncomfortably.

He dug inside his jacket and pulled out a card. "We'll be in town for a few days. This is a good number for me. Call me and we'll catch up. Have a beer, or something." She looked at the card like it was a cockroach. Then up at Sam like he was a moron. He was a moron. She was holding a pie. Her hands were full. He smiled awkwardly, embarrassed. 

Ronnie closed her eyes and counted. Her lips moved with each number just like they used to. Once she reached her magic number, eighteen, she took a deep breath, and looked back up at Sam. 

A hopeful smile twitched at this the edge of his lips. She would react right this time. He knew she would.

The color washed out of her face again. 

Sam's heart sank.

"Nope," Veronica said, shaking her head. "This is all just...nope." She turned away from Sam, who was still holding out his card, and headed into the main part of the office.

Sam looked to Dean for help.

"We're Feds," Dean said smoothly, pulling out a badge, and blocking her exit. "Sam here is undercover. You need to leave because you might accidentally blow that cover. But," Dean added, "you can leave the pie. I'll take care of it."

A wave of relief washed over Sam. His shoulders dropped an inch and he stood up slightly straighter. 

Veronica looked at him and at Dean and back again. “No. This is not happening. Not today.” She closed her eyes, took a deep, and then she was pushing past Dean, walking away from the Winchesters as fast as possible. The meringue wiggled slightly as she fled.

“What's she got against you, Sam?” Dean turned his head to watch her scurry off. "Bad-break-up?"

Sam rolled his eyes, “We were friends at Stanford, nothing else.” Sam grit his teeth and strode after her, rapidly closing the distance. “Hey, Veronica. Wait!”

The hallways was a generic white with a generic grey carpet. The cubicle maze was identical to every other corporate cubicle maze they had ever encountered. In this environment, a suit was as good as an invisibility cloak. At least it was as long as there wasn't any drama.

Ronnie spun around to face him, her skirt lifting slightly. He pulled up short and just barely avoided running into her and getting pie all over his suit. The top of her head reached his collar bones.

“You cannot be here Sam Winchester,” she hissed. “I am in a good place. People love me here. I am finally getting the respect and appreciation I deserve, and I will not have you destroy it! Again!” She took a determined step forward, and Sam tripped backwards to get away from her, gathering his arms up as he tried to shrink. "You haven't even bothered updating your damned lie!"

"Please calm down, ma'am" Dean ordered. She glared over the top of her glasses at him. She should not have been intimidating. She was a foot shorter than Dean in heels and she was holding a pie. 

"I know damned well that Sam isn't a Fed. I don't think you are either, _Doug._ Shit, that's not right," she bit her lip and looked up at the ceiling and then back at Dean, narrowing her eyes.

"Dennis!" she said triumphantly.

"Dean," he nodded his head solemnly.

"Whatever. I don't care who you are or what you are hear to steal. This time, I'm going to stop you."

Sam stepped toward up and spoke low and urgent. "Ronnie, you don't understand--" 

"You used up all your credibility eight years ago," she hissed. "You don't get to try and sweet talk me again." Her face was blotchy. She started to turn away, but didn't even manage a full 180 before she'd turned back again.

"Despite everything,” Ronnie said, her voice low and furious, “I made peace with what happened. In the end, I was glad that I had sexorcised you from my life. It is embarrassing, now, to think that I ever had a crush on a man like you. That I thought Jessica was lucky to have landed you--” She stopped speaking abruptly, her eyes shiny, her skin flushed. Her hands were shaking with anger around the pie pan. She gritted her teeth.

“Fuck,” she huffed, “I'll make another one.” 

She slapped the pie in Sam's face.

Stepping back to survey the mess with a triumphant snort, Ronnie flipped her hair and stomped off, calling back over her shoulder, “You've got a 30 second lead at most, Shaggy! I'm calling security right now!”

Dean’s eyebrows were popping off his face. “Well, isn’t she just adorkable. Good thing we've got inside contacts." He looked at Sam, who was dripping pie and swallowed a smile. "You're getting slow, Sammy," Dean said as he patted his brother on the shoulder.

Sam wiped pie from his nose and chin. Veronica's rage had caught him off guard. She was one of the few people from his past he was still on good terms with. At least he thought they had been on good terms. At least neutral terms. Not pie in the face terms.

“Oh Sammy, Sammy, Sammy,” Dean muttered, glowing with pleasure. “Don’t worry. I’ve been there. You probably deserved it.” 

Dean was savoring the moment. Sam could see the plans slowly developing in his head. There would be puns, and jokes, and stories. For years. Dean even unconsciously licked his lips. 

“Is her pie any good?” Dean asked. There was a sweet lemony smell that was wafting in the air. Maybe a lemon-lime mix. There had been candied slices of both decorating the edges of the crust. And a slight note of something barely floral mixed in as well, maybe lavender, or passion fruit?

“You know what,” Sam declared brightly, wiping more delicate meringue and thick sticky custard off his face, “why don’t you try it?” 

It wasn’t a whole pie, but Sam’s hands were not small. He managed to get a significant amount of pie onto Dean’s face. He wanted to get the stuff stuck up Dean's nose. 

Suddenly the absurdity of the whole situation struck Sam and he started laughing: big, knee slapping guffaws.

Dean licked his lips without wiping off his face. There was defiantly passion fruit in the meringue.


	2. Family Style Shepard's Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "They aren't hell hounds," Sam said.
> 
> "Maybe they are hell monkeys," Dean offered
> 
> "They aren't hell monkeys" Ronnie interrupted them. "Whose ever heard of hell monkeys, that's ridiculous. They're Gibborim."

Mostly cleaned up, Sam and Dean walked back through the cubicle maze. 

“So tell me about that Ronnie chick,” Dean ordered.

Sam shouldered past his brother into an empty cube where the computer monitor had been left on and unlocked. He immediately started digging into the system while Dean took sentry. 

“She was an art history major," Sam said without looking up. "I met her freshman year. We were both assigned to a project about Hieronymus Bosch.”

“Tiny people fucking on strawberries, right?” Dean declared, still scanning the room. 

“I’ve dated a goth chick or two,” Dean explained with a shrug. “Turns out old arty porn is fun, too.”

Sam shook off his surprise and went back to typing. “Ronnie and I became friends. Then sophomore year, I met Jessica. We hung out less. That was about it.” Sam’s eyes tracked quickly over the computer screen. “I think I’m in.” 

“And the sexorcism? When did that happen? Cause nothing you’ve said explains why you got pied.”

“I’ve never had sex with Veronica,” Sam was typing rapidly. “Okay, I've got the security feed. Let’s get out of here.”

"Why not?"

Sam narrowed his eyes. He stood up and pushed past his brother.Again. He _may_ have crowded Dean's personal space more than was strictly necessary.

Dean spread his hands with exasperation. "Don't bitchface me, bro!" 

The security feed had shown the last monster attack near the break room and Sam wanted to check for residual EMF. He did not want to talk about girls that he had, or hadn't, boned in college. 

"It's a perfectly normal question. She totally got under your skin. You were all like-" Dean pulled his hands up limp-wristed and made cringing gestures, while letting his mouth pout and his eyes get big. "So tell me what the big deal is?"

Sam pointedly did not answer the question. What was he going to say? She made him watch Dumbo once. He cried like a baby. Then it was too weird for anything to happen. Ever. 

No, Sam wasn't going to tell Dean that. 

Instead, he started rattling off the monster's specifications. He was halfway through known strengths (claws, teeth, invisibility) and weaknesses (none) when the screaming started.

# # # 

Dean turned the break room table onto its side for basic cover. Ronnie was huddled behind it with the other office refugees. Dean peeked over the edge, gun ready to snipe any smokey ape monsters he saw. He didn't really care that the guns weren't going to kill it. Wounding and delay were good, too.

Veronica had torn a few strips of fabric off the bottom of her skirt and bandaged the hand of a crying bookkeeper. Her cardigan was draped around an IT guy that had gone into shock. Dean couldn’t really hear what she was murmuring to them, but the murmur itself had a soothing maternal quality. 

“I liked your pie,” Dean said. 

“Get all of us out of this alive and I will make you a dozen. In any flavors you want," she looked around the room and Dean could see the wheels turning in her head. She scooted across the floor and pulled a pouch out of one of the bottom cabinets. "Here, this might help.” 

“A hex bag?” Dean looked at it suspiciously. 

“Hoodoo protection. They work pretty well to make you invisible to those things. I’ll hand out this stash. There are more in my office, and the ladies restroom, and behind the copy machine. Do you have a way to let Sam know?”

“Okay. So...you’re a witch?” 

“No. Not really. But why don’t we save the heart-to-heart for after the survival.”

Dean pulled a phone out of his pocket handed it to her. "Try Moose." 

Ronnie dialed as the room started to fill with unnatural shadows. Dean fired into each quivering piece of air. There were howls, but no dying. The air was thick with a sickly sweet smell, like melted ice cream left to curdle in the car. When he ran out of bullets he drew out his angel blade. It glowed briefly. Then the air was suddenly lighter and fresher. Dean thought things might be looking up.

Veronica closed the phone and handed it back to him. "Sam's closest to the women's restroom. He'll meet you there." 

"Of course he will." 

She looked around hopefully. "Do you think you can get us to the stairwell?" 

# # #

Dean held the stairwell door open and ushered the office workers out. Ronnie was the last in line. Dean looked her over again. This time more carefully.

"Thank you," she said with a relieved smile.

"No problem." Dean pointed his gun at her, and pulled back the hammer with a click.

"What are you doing?" Veronica asked, taking a step backwards.

"Sister, you know a hell of a lot more about what's going on here than you are letting on. We're going to go find Sam, and then the three of us are going to have a nice long chat about how you ended up in this episode of Nerd Girls with Hex Bags."

# # #

Sam turned the hoodoo bag over and over between his fingers. He was trying to remember if he'd ever taught Ronnie how to make one. She'd always been doing course work in American folklore and arcana. Once upon a time, he might have tried to show off. He opened it up and took a whiff, which gave him a sinking feeling in his stomachache. It was Dad's hoodoo bag recipe, alright. Basic protection stuff.

"There were how many of these?" he asked Dean

"At least a dozen in the kitchen. She listed another three other stockpiles. How many were in here?"

"Three"

"There are actually six in here," Ronnie said. "I really don't like the idea of anyone getting caught with their pants down."

"Of course you don't," Dean said. He leaned into Sam and lowered his voice. "She says she's not a witch, but I don't buy it."

"Dean this is all basic protection stuff. The only thing its missing is goopher dust."

"So she's not summoning the monsters--"

"She's hiding from them."

"Crossroad's deal?"

"They aren't hell hounds."

"Maybe they're hell monkeys."

"They aren't hell monkeys," Ronnie interrupted the banter. "Whose ever heard of hell monkeys? That's ridiculous. They're Gibborim."

Dean looked at her. Then at Sam. His brother's brow was furrowed. And he was giving Ronnie the type of stare that broke men under questioning. Dean looked back to Ronnie. Who was meeting Sam's stare, nostrils flaring. 

"Okay, I give," Dean said. "What's a Gibborim?"

"It's a lower order of angel," Sam answered, eyes still fixed on Veronica.

"Well it's debatable if they're actually angels," Ronnie corrected him. "The might be hybrids like the Nephilim, or a related off-shoot. In the Hebrew, the word Gibborim can be glossed as "mightiest" because it's an intensive for "gabar," which is how they describe the Nephilim, and why the two are often conflated. My source says that Nephilim usually look normal, though."

"She has a _source._ Did you hear that Sam? She has a fucking source. That "source" the one that taught you to make hex bags? Is that who you sold your soul too?"

"Like I would need to sell my soul to get a hex bag!" Ronnie snorted. "Do I look like I've never heard of Google? The monsters showed up. I learned how to deal with them. Sam had a recipe almost exactly like this is college. Are you witches?" 

"Sam, gave you a hex bag recipe is college?" Dean gave his brother a suspicious side-eye.

"We had a project on Hieronymus Bosh. It took us down some Gothic rabbit holes. What's your problem?" 

"My problem is that you are a civilian. We don't talk about work with civilians."

Sam glared at his brother. That had been over a decade ago. It wasn't like Dean had never used the family business to get a girl. Sam had been an awkward kid. He hadn't merged easily with the other 19 year-old college freshmen. It wasn't like most girls were impressed that he'd memorized both the Catholic and Anglican exorcisms in perfect Latin. 

“Ronnie," Sam asked. "How long have you been dealing with this?” His voice was quiet, but not soft. It echoed off the tiled walls of the women’s restroom. He didn't like how it sounded. He was trying to be sympathetic, but he felt betrayed. It wasn’t logical. Veronica didn’t know what he did. Well, not specifically. There was no particular reason she should have called him. But it still hurt that she hadn't. 

“Oh, about 5 years.” Her voice had a forced optimism. “Mostly small appearances. It was only ever one at a time before last month. This was a couple of light-years and super-bosses beyond what’s happened before. I mean, I knew it was going to escalate, I just didn't think it would happen this fast.” 

Sam closed his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. He needed a minute to breathe.

Dean glanced at him, and took over the interrogation. “Why do you think they’re after you?” 

“They aren’t after me,” Ronnie said with a deadpan confidence. “They’re tracking me, because I wear a decoy to pull them-"

"What?" Sam interjected.

"-but I wouldn’t lead them to what they want. I’d die first. I mean hopefully not, I don't want to die, but I would.” Ronnie crossed her arms over her chest.

“What do they want?” Dean tried again.

Veronica turned toward the mirror and pressed her lips together, gritting her teeth. It was obvious both that the wheels were turning in her head, and that she didn’t trust Sam and Dean. 

“Ronnie, whatever it is, we can help," Sam said. "I promise. This is what we do.”

She turned back, hands on her hips. “This is what you do? For how long?”

Sam's mouth twisted sideways. “All our lives.”

“We’re kind of heroes,” Dean bragged. “Monsters everywhere fear the Winchester brothers.”

Sam shook his head with a slight _no_ , and Dean deflated.

Veronica eyes bounced back and forth. She let out a long sigh. 

“My daughter,” she admitted. “They want my daughter.”

# # #

Sam pointed out the hoodoo marks at the front of the building to Dean, who nodded discretely in acknowledgement. 

The apartment was bright and filled with colorful knick-knacks. A little girl ran to greet them as soon as they got in the door. She was clutching a stuffed Scooby-Doo dog that was nearly as big as she was, and she wasn’t small. Her head landed right in the middle of Veronica’s chest. 

“She’s big for a seven year-old,” Dean said admiringly. 

“All legs and elbows,” Ronnie said with a smile. “Evan, say hello to Sam and Dean.”

The girl tipped her head in acknowledgement, but didn’t speak, or let go of her mother. 

“Have you had dinner yet, Honey?" 

Evan shook her head no.

"Of course not. Louisa?" Ronnie called. "We could use your help?” 

There was shimmer in the air and a black woman appeared in a 70’s dashiki and giant Afro. She looked skeptically at the homecoming party. 

“Well, it’s gonna be that kind of night is it?” She had a thick New Orleans accent, and she looked down at Evan wryly. “You could have given me some warning child, I would have started warming up the Shepard's pie in the freezer.” She cocked her head to the side as if she was listening. “Don’t get sassy. We’ve talked about this, you know it doesn’t count if I don’t understand.” 

“You’ve got a ghost for a Nanny?” Dean asked alarmed. 

“I’m not a ghost. I’m an Ori Orun. An ancestral spirit here to guide and watch over my descendants,” Louisa enunciated, “and my grandchildren have proud destinies. The Orishas themselves have taken note.”

Dean looked down at Evan, who was as pale as her mother. Her dark hair was slightly curlier, and her eyes were hazel rather than Bermuda blue, but she didn't look related to any Ori Oruns.

Louisa rolled her eyes. “I know how it looks, but I’m not doing this for TV. I go to the granddaughter that calls to me with the most need. Evan’s pale, but more people than admit it have African roots in their family tree.” She looked at Sam and Dean with a haughty displeasure. “Winchesters been here long enough to know that.” 

Dean stared back at her, calculating threats. It didn't seem that like there was any immediate problem. He shrugged. "Can't argue with that." 

“So you’re the one who made the hex bags?” Sam asked. "Where did you get the recipe?"


	3. Lemon Chess Pie with a Cornmeal Crust.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You had it that bad for Sam?" Dean asked
> 
> "Look, please, let's not talk about this. I'm sure you know your brother. I don't need to explain what an asshole he is. Dredging up the past is only going to make things complicated and make me regret letting you guys in."
> 
> Dean squinted at her "You think Sam's the asshole?"

Veronica closed Evan’s door softly. Dean watched as she sank into the couch and let her head drop back in exhaustion, story book still in hand. Sam and Louisa were on the other side of the apartment. Their voices drifted over the empty space. 

“So you only protect girls?” Sam asked.

“There are other ancestors for boys that can be invoked, but, yes, my avocation...” 

Dean stopped paying attention, he was focused on his own interrogation plans. Ronnie had beer and a whole chess pie in her fridge. Chess Pie, the best use extra eggs, cream, and lemon could be put too. Dean wanted to know more about her. He wanted to know more about her and Sam. He put his plate down on the coffee table and handed Ronnie a beer. She accepted with a smile. 

His first bite of pie was heavenly. Chess pie is difficult to do badly. It's basically just butter and sugar, two of the worlds most perfects food. But, it's also difficult to make perfect. It's all technique. There's no improving the ingredients. This was a good crust. While your standard chess always used cornmeal as a extra, this was a full cornmeal crust. It was crisp and gave a nice crunch to the overall pudding mouth feel of the pie. He chewed slowly. Sam trusted Ronnie. Sam wasn't that smart about trusting women. He leaned toward monsters. Dean wanted to trust her. She seemed like a good mom. She made a good pie, and swilled her beer with confidence. Hell, he expected to get along with her. That probably explained everything about why she didn't work with Sam.

He took a chug from his bottle, and smiled charmingly.

“So Evan doesn’t speak?” 

“Not yet. Not to the likes of us, at least. Louisa seems to hear her fine. There’s nothing wrong that the doctors can find. I figure it’s some kind of psychological reaction to, to, well, you know…” Ronnie circled her bottle in the air, an all encompassing gesture.

“You have any idea why these things are after her?” 

“Louisa says it’s something in her blood. Apparently she’s a near perfect 'vessel,' whatever that means.” 

“For like angels?” 

“Or Gibborim.” 

Dean furrowed his brow. Angels needed consent. Were Gibborim different? Why weren't they trying to invade all the other adult vessels like him or Sam? He made a mental note to quiz Cas about it.

“Sam said you two were friends at Stanford.”

Ronnie sighed. "That's accurate enough."

"You had a bunch of classes together?"

"Native American Art and Folklore, Medieval Religious Iconography, Latin. And of course, our Art History small session. I've got a last name that starts with a W too."

"Art History?"

"The department requires all its majors to do these team building groups." 

"Sam wasn't an Art History major. He was pre-law."

"He was Art History first. Shaggy switched to pre-law halfway through sophomore year cause it impressed the blonde he was dating."

Dean took a minute to process. Art. Fucking. History. He'd tumbled into a goldmine.

"So, um, you weren't a big fan of Jessica's?"

"Were you?"

"I didn't really know her that well. Sam took it hard when she died."

Ronnie slumped and took a long pull on her beer. She looked across the room at Sam and Louisa for a long time. Dean didn't push. When she turned back to him her smile was forced.

"How do you like that pie?"

"It's delicious."

"Good. Then that can be the first one I owe you."

"Where'd you learn to bake?"

"College heartbreak. I don't wallow, I chemistry. I can make bathtub gin, too.”

“That's cool. Is it any good?”

“Not really. It tastes like turpentine. But it's alcoholic.”

Dean chuckled. He ran his fingers over the plate to pick up the last of the crumbs.

"So who broke your heart and let you lean to make hooch."

Ronnie smiled tightly at him. Dean waited. She shifted in her seat uncomfortably.

"You want another beer?" she asked. "I could use another beer." She got up and walked to the kitchen.

Dean followed her. 

"You had it that bad for Sam?"

"Look, please, let's not talk about this. I'm sure you know your brother. I don't need to explain what an asshole he is. Dredging up the past is only going to make things complicated and make me regret letting you guys in."

Dean squinted at her "You think Sam's the asshole?"

"You know I tried to get back in touch with him when Jess died. He sent me like three e-mails from the road saying he was traveling with you, taking some time off. Then it was radio silence. I mean he'd told me about your mother, and back in college I totally bought his sensitive guy shit. I made him soup once when he had a cold, and Shaggy basically swore fealty to me. Who does that if they aren't trying to play you?"

Dean didn't really know what to say. Nobody thought Sam was the asshole. It was refreshing and irritating at the same time.

"So you really hunt monsters? All the time?" she asked, handing Dean a fresh beer.

"Killing things and saving people. That's the motto."

"Okay." She put both her hand on the counter top and tilted her head back and fort, like she was weighing something important. "I suppose you need special weapons for that kind of work? Old mystical museum weapons?"

"Sometimes."

"And you steal them when you have to?"

"If we have to." Dean smiled. "Once when we were fighting these dragons-"

"Dragons?"

"Virgin eating, gold loving, Dragons." He liked this girls. Maybe just because he'd been having his own long frustrating experience of being hung up on someone who _just didn't get it._ You knew you should let it go and move on, but somehow, no matter what you tried, that just didn't seem to happen.

"Okay," Ronnie smiled bravely. "So, at least my curatorial career at the Smithsonian was sacrificed for a good cause. That's something."

Dean was about to ask a follow-up question when Cas suddenly appeared between them. 

"Dude, it's good to see you!" Dean gave Cas a hug. He squeezed again, then ended up giving a "dude pat" to recover the moment. When he stepped back he leaned heavily on the kitchen counter, putting as much space as he could between himself and Cas. "So, what are these things and How do we kill them?"

"Dean, you have to get everyone out of this apartment immediately!" 


	4. Cherry Blossom Cherry Pie.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soulless Sam seduces Ronnie for her access to the Smithsonian.

Dean was driving, Sam was searching the map with a flashlight and Ronnie and Evan were asleep in the back seat. Louisa, reportedly, was hanging out in some ritual item that was inside one of the bug-out bags in the trunk.

Ronnie and Evan had bug-out bags. When the wards around her apartment had cracked she jumped into motion and fled while Sam and Dean fought the monsters. Ten minutes later both Winchesters got a text with partial co-ordinates. They had to combine the info to find Ronnie and Evan. By the time they arrived, Ronnie had unloaded the trunk and was letting the air out of her tires. 

“If you ditched your phones, how did you text us?” Sam asked. 

“Louisa,” Ronnie replied. “She’s good on the internet.”

Veronica gave them an address and Sam hadn’t asked any more questions. Not ten minutes later, mother and daughter had both collapsed. Scooby-Doo wedged between them in the back seat.

“So,” Dean started “what happened between you two.”

Sam gave him the bitch-face and Dean rolled his eyes.

“You know she had a giant crush on you in college right?” Dean started again.

“I kind of figured it out in retrospect. I think Jessica mentioned it at some point.” Sam was basically squirming in his seat. 

“She told me that when you two broke up she taught herself to make bath tub gin.”

“We didn’t break up. We were never dating.”

“She’s a good cook.” Dean wasn’t going to let this go. 

“Yea, she is. This place is really out in the middle of nowhere.” 

“She made you soup when you were sick?”

Sam furrowed his brow. “Chicken soup. With Matzah balls. I’d forgotten about that.”

“What’s a Matzah ball?”

“Like a dumpling. It was bready and salty and good.”

“She promised me a dozen pies, you know. She, uh, ever make you a pie? Maybe a sweet, sweet cherry pie?”

"She's in the back seat, Dean. You're not being subtle, nothing happened, and if it had, I wouldn't talk about it. Turn here."

“Come on, you have to tell me what happened at the Smithsonian? At the very least I want to know what the weapon was.” The gravel crunched under Baby’s wheels as they pulled up to the cabin.

“Huh?” Sam grunted confused as he climbed out of the car. He was paying more attention to the cabin than Dean, scanning it with his flashlight, and squinting at the sigils on the walls.

“You. Her. The Smithsonian. The sexorcism. End of her curatorial career.” Dean rattled off, squinting at the sigils himself.

“Veronica and the Smithsonian...” Sam repeated, a creeping bewilderment in his voice. Dean could see him struggling to remember. His face twisted through a whole series of confused expressions. 

“Take your time Sherlock,” Dean encouraged. “It’ll come to you.”

Suddenly Sam blanched, dropping his flashlight.

“That bad?” 

“Shit, Dean. I didn’t have a soul.”

# # #

The knife Sam wanted was in the Smithsonian’s American History Museum. It was a ceremonial Lakota blade that was supposed to be perfect for killing what shifted between human and animal form. They were hunting Alphas, and he’d been tracing stories about the first coyote spirit. He suspected it would work against werewolves, too. 

He’d mapped out her schedule. When he walked in, flashing his badged, and asked for the curator he knew she’d be the one to greet him.

“Sam Winchester? You work for the FBI?” Veronica asked giving him a wide and stupid, giddy grin.

“Well, my life took a few unexpected turns along the way,” he smiled, “but look at you, exactly where you wanted to be.”

She blushed. “And you were right, I’m never going to pay back my Stanford loans working in a museum. But on the bright side, I just got approval to put together an exhibit about Zombies.”

“Zombies?”

“Their history and symbolism from colonial times. America’s native monster. We’re having a walking dead marathon as a fundraiser. But why are you here, G-man?”

“We have reason to believe that someone is going to try and steal this list of artifacts.” He handed her a wrinkled print out. “I want to see where each one is located and protected. Can you walk me through the security?”

“Sure,” she said. “But I think you’ll find that it’s airtight. To get at any of these things someone on staff would have to be involved.”

“Really? That’s good to know.” Sam did the calculations in his head. He knew Veronica had a crush on him. She’d wanted him since freshman year of college and there wasn’t a ring on her finger. He smiled and leaned forward slightly. He was rewarded with a small gasp and catch in her breath. He reached out and took her hand.

“It’s good to see you again, Ronnie.” 

She blushed across her cheeks, throat, and chest. “It’s good to see you too, Sam.”

This was going to be easy. One kiss and she’d be swiping him into any part of the museum he wanted to see. 

“So,” he put his hand back in his pocket. “Show me around and maybe we can catch up after work?” 

“Of course,” she said.

Sam was waiting when she got off at 5:00. The cherry blossoms were blooming, but there was still a chill in the air that turned her cheeks pink.

He had a detached sense of the romance of the scene. His long dark coat fluttering in the breeze, pushing against his legs. The pale petals swirling around his feet and landing in bright bursts against his arms. He met her as she came down the steps, reading the slight dilation in her eyes. 

“Where do you like to eat around here?” he asked.

“This way,” she said with a toss of her head. 

He reached out and wrapped an arm around her shoulder. The slight shiver she gave in response just confirmed his plan. At dinner, he encouraged her to have an extra glass of wine or two. He focused on making eye contact and smiling. She talked about getting her Ph.D., the job at the Smithsonian, her ordinary life since college. He didn't say much. He didn’t need, too.

When they finished eating he suggested they keep the date going. Walk around town like tourists.

Ronnie stiffened. Sam wondered if he’d overplayed the moment.

“This is date? Like a real date or a friend date?” Ronnie asked.

“A real date,” Sam said with a grin.

“Oh.” 

She looked deliciously vulnerable. Sam leaned over the table and kissed her cheek. She made a surprised hiccuping sound that he found funny, and went beet red.

“So, um, I just, um, I mean-- You've never thought of me that way,” Ronnie said.

Sam smiled at her. “I always thought of you that way Ronnie. I just didn’t know how to act on it back in college.” That was true. He’d wanted her in college. She was his first friend. She’d eased the transition from one life to another. Looking at her now he couldn’t puzzle out why he hadn’t acted on his impulses.

She looked at him skeptically. “Really?” 

“Really.” 

Objectively, she wasn’t as attractive as Jessica: tall leggy blonde beat short busty brunet. But he could have been sleeping with Veronica for almost a year before he met Jessica. There was no way she would have rejected him. What had he been so afraid of? Losing her friendship? He hadn’t made any particular effort to keep up with her once he left school. 

He found himself puzzling it over as they walked around the national mall. So many things had been clearer since he got back from hell. Jessica was a nice enough girl, but she was also a patsy. Chosen for him by demons. A lure to pull him into the fantasy of a normal life and make him vulnerable to Lucifer. Not that different than Ruby, when he thought about it. Just innocent about her role. Dumb. In that way at least, Ronnie would have been a better choice. She was always a lot more receptive to his hunter habits. Brady never liked her. She didn’t like him. Both of those seemed meaningful in retrospect.

He couldn’t quite put his finger on why Ronnie had seemed so impossible, and Jessica so easy. They were on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when he decided to ask her.

“Why were you so scary back in college?” 

“What?” she blinked at him.

“I remember wanting to pick you up and trap you against the library shelves, but I never did.” 

“Ah, um, ah,” Ronnie’s eye’s were wide with surprise, she caught her breathe after a moment. “I wouldn’t have objected.”

“I never really thought you would.” He furrowed his brow at her. “So why didn’t it happen?” He had vague memories of worrying about what he would say to John. John would have liked Veronica. He would have instantly seen how useful a trained researcher could be. Especially a polyglot with a love of dead languages. If she had been with Sam, John might just have brought her in. Sam remembered being revolted by the idea. He didn't want to become the ivory tower version of Bobby. He wanted to get out of the life. Answering phones as the FBI while Veronica translated obscure documents would have been a failure of his escape plan. All that angst seemed ridiculous now. 

She laughed. “Were you worried it would change our friendship?”

“Maybe.” That wasn't what he had worried about. But the lie was easy and familiar.

She smiled flirtatiously at him. “Well then, I guess it’s good we aren’t close friends anymore.” 

“No. I guess we aren’t.” She was two step above him, he reached out and caught her around the waist pulling her in for a long kiss. She tasted slightly of cherries. Probably from the restaurant dessert. It was pleasant. He wondered if any of the emotions that had been so paralyzing in college would return now. 

Ronnie tucked her head down against his chest. She was panting slightly, trembling. “I’m not sure I really believe this is happening.”

“Do guys like me, not usually go for girls like you?” It was something she'd said to him years ago. One of the last things she'd ever said to him.

She snorted. “I see your confidence has improved.” 

He shrugged.

“You were a really hard lesson for me the first time around, Sam.”

“How so?”

“Well we spent all that time together, and I thought we were flirting, but you made it really clear that it was only a study group. I mean, I thought we were going end up as Nick and Nora Charles. Which is embarrassing to admit.”

“Spending our time sipping hooch, snarking, and solving mysteries? I remember.”

“I guess that’s less funny now that you actually investigate murders. Do you investigate murders?”

“I’ve spent a fair amount of time around dead people.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m fine with my profession.”

He could feel her reluctance building. She was going to try and slow this down when he needed it accelerated. He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her again. He started slowly, waiting to feel her melt against him. When at last she sighed and pushed into the kiss he slid his hands down her sides and around her waist. She stretched up towards him, wrapping her arms around his neck. He cupped his hands around her ass and lifted her up, smiling when she yelped slightly in surprise, then quickly wrapped her legs tightly around him. Acceleration achieved. 

“Do you know what’s almost as good as sex in the library?” he said biting at her ear. “Sex in a museum.” 

“Seriously?” she asked

“Seriously. I have years of fantasies to explore. Everything I didn’t do in college. In my dreams, we're always in the dead languages section.” He nibbled at her neck and she moaned. “We’re trying to be quiet but these books keep falling off the shelves, and we keep getting interrupted.”

“You’ve had dreams about me?” She was flushed and her voice was breathy.

“Yes.” He gave her a wolfish grin. It wasn’t untrue. He had had dreams about her, back before he came back from hell and stopped sleeping or dreaming. It obviously meant something to her and he wanted her to trust him. He wanted to get back into the museum and he needed someone on the inside. 

Veronica looked at him hungrily. He knew he’d won ,even before she pulled out her key card and dangled it in front of him.

He distracted her from thinking too much. Whenever she showed the slightest hesitation he would mention some detail about their history: a movie they watched; a song that had been popular, something random they’d studied. Every detail he remembered made her more compliant, more eager to please him. 

She lead him to her office and he thumbed the books on her shelves. It looked like she’d added a few more languages to her repertoire after college. John really would have loved her. He hated all that translating. She was so in love back then, she wouldn’t have protested if Sam had asked her to work on something. She wouldn't have asked questions, either. Just like she wasn’t protesting or questioning now.

Veronica had a large stuffed Scooby-Doo Dog on the book shelf. He picked it up. “Why does this look familiar?” 

“It doesn’t work as well with you in your fed suit, Shaggy.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was Sophomore year, Brady was dragging you to a Halloween party, and you were dragging me along, too. But since you hated Halloween, you refused to wear a costume. I decided to ambush you. I dressed as Velma, you always looked like Shaggy already, so when I asked you to hold Scooby, voila, a couple’s costume by stealth. You were so embarrassed when you finally figured it out, which took longer than it should have, but you looked super cute. I was planning on getting you drunk and taking advantage of you that night, but I never got the chance.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I wasn’t the only person who noticed how cute you looked. The sexy blonde cop arrested you and took you home. Velma never really had a chance. By the time you returned Scooby to me, Jessica was your girlfriend.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Of course not." She sighed. "I tried to be cool but I couldn’t spend time with you two as a couple. Plus, you were constantly trying to set me up with Brady after that, for double dates.”

“Brady. Right. Probably good you avoided that, he turned out to be, demonic.”

“Such a douche! I’m so glad you see it now! You were always trying to help him and he was such a toxic user. Back then I couldn’t say a word against him, you wouldn’t hear it.”

Sam looked at the ceiling thinking. “That sounds, right. Is that why we lost touch?”

“Well that was certainly part of it." She looked guilty. "I tried to get in touch with you after Jessica," she swallowed "but I don’t know if you ever got my messages. No one knew where you were.”

Sam sat on the desk and pulled her in close to him. “Why did you keep the Scooby? Why is it here in your office?”

Veronica blushed. “Well, it’s not because of you, if that’s what you think.”

“That’s what I think, now.”

She put her arms around his neck, and smiled playfully at him. “It’s a reminder to me not to give in to wishful thinking. No matter how much I want it, magic doesn’t exist, there is no supernatural, just cheaters and liars in costumes trying to make you think they are something they’re not.”

He tilted his head. “Still sounds like it might be about me.”

“I hope not, Shaggy.” She leaned in to kiss him. 

She was small. He could wrap both arms all the way around her and still grab his own elbows. There was a muscle memory to holding her that pulled at his groin, even as his mind observed what was happening with detachment. She reached up to pull off her glasses and he stopped her. 

“Not yet. When I think of you, you’re always wearing them.”

He kissed her jaw and throat. He slid his hands down the sides of her hips. He slowly gathered up the material of her pencil skirt, pulling it upward into his fists, until it was all in a belt around her waist. She shivered, and he imagined the what the cold air of the room was doing against her legs. He moved his hands down to her ass. Even with most of the curve in his palms, he could have hooked his thumbs back over her hips. He had passing thoughts about how easy it would be to break her. She was delicate and trusting. 

He grunted. Knowing just how much power he had in this situation was arousing. He brought his hands up and grabbed her breasts through her shirt. She moaned and leaned the weight of her body into his hands. He smirked, then decided she needed to be naked. He pulled her blouse apart popping the buttons. Her eyes got wide and her breath shallow. He slid his hands over her bare shoulders and pulled the fabric off her arms, dropping it to the floor.

He kissed her again. Running his hands over the bare skin of her back. He unhooked her bra and found the zipper of her bunched up skirt. It took so little to work her out of all of it. He leaned back to enjoy the moment. She was lovely. Bare and trembling before him, in just her little printed cotton undies and her square toed high heels. She pushed her glasses back up her nose nervously. He let a long slow breath out his nose and rolled up his sleeves.

# # #

Over the course of the night, he moved them through the positions in his mind methodically. Him sitting in the chair with her on top of him. Her sitting on the desk with him in front of her. Him holding her up against the wall making her pant. Her bent over the desk with him behind her grunting. 

He wondered the whole time if once he got the picture perfect, her glasses skewed, her smile just right, if he’d then feel what he remembered feeling. It seemed obtainable. Just beyond his fingertips. The memory of his desire and fear were tantalizing flavors, but still only echoes. Turned out there wasn’t a magic kiss that could turn him back into a real boy.

She fell asleep against his chest. He was sitting up, his back to the wall, disappointed that none of this meant what it should have meant. He eased her down to the floor, and then got dressed, pocketing her key card. He’d memorized the key code when she’d used it earlier. He pulled a roll of duck tape out of his overcoat and immediately covered her mouth with a strip. She woke up then, confused. He took advantage of that confusion to put her into her office chair and bind her wrists.

“While this does give me lots of kinky ideas,” he said, “that’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it, because despite how much fun we had tonight, and it was fun,” he kissed the top of her head, “I can’t have you getting in my way. Sorry, Ronnie. This'll also give you a better cover story.” 

He locked the office door behind him, and then took the items he wanted from the exhibits halls. He got a few nifty things from storage as well. By the time the sun rose he was out of town. He didn’t think about Ronnie again. 


	5. Overnight Icebox Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam turned on Dean. “Dude, what was that?”
> 
> “Just trying to help.”
> 
> “Well, stop.” 
> 
> “Okay.”

Sam carried Evan and Scooby inside the house, leaving Dean and Ronnie to unload the car. Or, more accurately, after confessing what he remembered to Dean in a guilty rush, Sam used the gallant act of carrying Evan to bed as a way to avoid Veronica.

No wonder she'd slapped a pie in his face. Sam had left Veronica tied up and naked, before robbing the Smithsonian using her identity card. 

Dean didn’t know what to say either. He kind of wanted to throttle his brother. He kind of wanted to give Ronnie an award for tricking Sam into a Scooby-Doo costume. How could Sam have forgotten about any of that? What was Dean going to do about it now? It wasn’t like he could to rake Sam over the coals, now, six plus years later. And Ronnie didn’t seem that traumatized. Sure, she hung out with spirit nannies and made hex bags against monsters, but he'd seen weirder. Maybe he wasn't exactly the best judge of trauma. Dean had a sinking feeling. His gut told him that the Winchesters had fucked up Veronica's life. If it was Sam's responsibility, it was his responsibility, too.

“You don’t have to carry both bags, Dean,” she said.

“Let a man have his chivalry when he can get it. Besides, I hear the Winchester brothers owe you a couple of good turns.” He smiled at her, but it didn't really reach his eyes.

She tilted her head at him and pursed her lips suspiciously. “Oh. So guess he’s filled you in.” She stared into the trunk and Dean suddenly started to worry about what was going on in her head. 

“You know that Sam, the one that screwed you over in D.C.--" Dean gulped, "Bad word choice. Sorry. But that wasn’t the real Sam.”

“Well, it wasn’t a shapeshifter," she closed her eyes. "So what was it? Demon possession? Some other possession?" She raised her hands and waived off the question before he could say anything. "No, I don’t want to know. Letting you two get involved with me and Evan was such a bad idea. Adrenaline thinking is bad, illogical thinking.”

“Stop. Don’t go there. No second guesses. You are facing down something supernatural, and we are the experts. Having us involved is a very good idea.”

“You’re already looking at me differently, Dean. And Sam's going to be looking at me differently, too.” She stared him down. He looked away embarrassed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.” She blew out a long slow breath out. “Okay. Thank you for getting us here. But it’s probably best if you two just take off in the morning. Leave early. Before we wake up. The less I have to explain to Evan the better.”

She slammed the trunk and headed toward the house.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean muttered to himself. He really didn’t need this. Not while Sam was in full pout as well. He hiked the bags back up on his shoulders and trundled after her. 

“Ronnie! Ronnie wait.” He followed her into the kitchen, dropping the bags against a wall. “He didn’t have a soul.” 

“What?” she asked.

“Sam, at the Smithsonian. It’s kind of a long story, but he didn’t have a soul. He has it back now. So he’s really not the douche from D.C. He’s a lot more like the kid you knew at Stanford.”

Ronnie looked at him blinking. “How did Sam lose his soul? Was he making deals with demons?”

“That time? No.” Dean said.

Ronnie’s eyes got wide. "That time?"

Dean tried to recover “He kind offered himself as bait to stuff Lucifer back into his cage and save the world, which worked, but there was, you know, a recovery period.” Dean looked up and saw Sam hiding in the door frame behind Veronica. Sam looked mortified. “But none of that has anything to do with whether to not we can help you, now, with the Gibborim problem.”

Ronnie rubbed her shoulders as if she was cold, and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m going to bed. I--I just can’t deal with this tonight.” 

She turned to head up the stairs, and Sam smooshed against the wall, trying to pretend that he was just arriving and that he hadn’t been hiding and listening to Dean make apologies for him. She rolled her eyes and pushed past him with a disgusted little huff. 

Sam turned on Dean. “Dude, what was that?”

“Just trying to help.”

“Well, stop.” 

“Okay.”

They both stood in awkward silence for a moment.

"She wondered if you were possessed.” Dean explained before Sam could ask.

Sam put his head into his hands. “This is the most embarrassing thing ever.”

Dean clapped his brother on the shoulder. “I think it’s a little worse for her than you, Shaggy. She said that she wanted us both gone before sunrise.”

“No. Absolutely not.” 

“It’s kind of her call.” Dean didn't really want to go either.

“She’s being hunted. We have to help her. I can’t,” Sam exhaled, “I can’t screw her over again.”

“Uh huh.” Dean looked at his brother seriously. “You realize you aren’t going to get back up her skirt right?”

Sam face contorted with a constipated frustration. “Don’t even go there. This is not like that. I feel bad enough as it is and if you try and turn this all into a joke I will break both your arms.”

"No you won't Sammy, if you did that you'd have to wait on me hand and foot."

"Then I will talk to Cas."

"About what?" Dean answered confused. What kind of threat was that?

"About Fire Island."

Dean froze, and then shrugged, conceding. “You want the couch or the floor?”

# # #

Nobody slept on the floor, or the couch. Sam had already scoped out the bedrooms, so they crashed on a set of twin beds he'd found. Sam’s legs dangling off the end of his mattress. Dean woke up to a rustling sound and wrapped his fist around the knife under his pillow. 

He looked toward Sam, who was still asleep, but now had the giant Scooby-Doo tucked under his arm. Dean blinked. It was adorable. Ronnie was a genius. He rolled his head up to find Evan staring at him seriously. He slowly let go of the knife.

“Kid, hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s creepy to stare at people while they sleep.” She rolled her eyes and then took his hand and tugged. 

“You want me to follow you?”

She nodded and tugged again. He grimaced and then let himself be pulled out of bed and down the stairs and all the way out to the Impala. Evan pointed to the back door.

“There is nothing in there that you need kid.”

She pointed, again. Then tapped on the door, _shave and a haircut-- shave and a haircut--_ After a moment, the door tapped back. _Two bits._ Evan looked up at him pleadingly. Dean unlocked the back seat. Evan climbed in and started searching the floorboards. She found a locket and the box of tapes. She slipped the locket over her head with a sigh. It had an ornate “M” engraved on the front. Then she started looking at the tapes.

The wheels were turning in Dean’s head. “That necklace, it's special, huh? Is that what Louisa is tied to?” 

Evan nodded.

“Your mom give it to you?”

“Actually,” Louisa said from the front passenger seat. “I gave it to her. It belonged to her father’s grandmother. Another girl I tried to look out for.”

“So the Ori protection doesn’t come from Ronnie side, it’s from Evan’s father’s people? Her dad is black?”

“Her paternal great-grandmother, Millicent, was black. In 1932 she decided to turn her back on her heritage and pass for white, because she could. I tried to talk her out of it. I failed. She married a white man. It took less than a decade before he abandoned her, and their son.”

“Oh.” Dean didn’t really know what else to say. 

Evan waved a tape at him. 

“Metallica? Are you sure you are ready for this?” She nodded vigorously, so he walked around the car and popped it into the Impala’s tape deck . Electric guitar and heavy drums blared it into the yard. Evan listened seriously, her head bobbing up and down.

“You like it?” Dean asked, a bit surprised.

She gave him a thumbs up. 

Ronnie stumbled out about then. There were circles under her eyes and her hair was sticking up on one side. She yelled from the porch and Dean shut down the music to hear her. 

“Evan, you know the rules. No heavy metal before Mommy has her coffee.” Ronnie looked like she hadn’t slept much. Evan grimaced snorted, and nodded. Dean swallowed guiltily. “Take Dean back inside and show him what’s on your ipod, okay honey? Just use headphones.”

Sam was just inside the screen door, waiting. He was holding the damned Scooby-Doo. Sam handed it to Evan who took it, peering up at him quizzically. 

Louisa rolled her eyes. “She wants to know if you are Shaggy.” 

Sam gave a nervous laugh. “No. I guess I look a little like him. But my name is Sam.”

“Are all Winchester’s idiots?" Louisa asked. "She knows you are not a cartoon character. She wants to know if you are _her mother’s_ Shaggy.”

“Oh. Um. Yeah. I guess she used to call me that. Back in college.”

Evan looked over her shoulder at Louisa. But Louisa shook her head. “I’m not doing the dirty work for you,” Louisa said. 

Evan stamped her foot and pointed at Sam, then at Dean. 

“Frankly” Louisa replied, “I don’t think it’s any of your business. Those are your mother’s decisions to make and I think she’s right not to trust them.”

Evan’s nostrils flared.

She opened her mouth into the shape of a scream, but no sound came out. Sam looked at Dean, and Dean looked back. Neither knew what to do.

“We’re all frustrated, child,” Louisa said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Throwing tantrums won’t help.”

Sam knelt down next to Evan and put a big hand on her shoulder. “Evan, hey, I know its hard to have to leave your home in the middle of the night, but we're going to make sure you are safe. I promise we aren’t going to let the monsters get you.”

Evan look at his hand on her shoulder. Then she looked at him. Then she looked at Scooby-Doo. Then, staring right at Sam, she held out her hands and dropped the doll making a disgusted face. Still without breaking the eye contact she had with Sam, she stomped on its head. 

"She doesn't believe you," Louisa translated. 

“Evan Mary Ellen!” Ronnie said sharply. Evan looked at her Mom and almost instantly started blubbering, her lower lip shook, her eyes got big and watery. She ran over and wrapped her arms around the woman’s waist. Veronica sighed. She looked up at the Winchesters. “Could you two give us a minute?”

“Sure,” said Sam, “we’ll just be outside.”

They walked out to the Impala and leaned on the hood. 

“What do you think that was about?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know. Kids are weird,” Dean replied. 

“Yeah. They are.” Sam crossed his arms over his chest frowned at the house.

“You know what,” Dean said, pulling Sam's focus away from Ronnie and her daughter. “I think it’s time Cas gave us some answers about these Gibborim.”


	6. Strawberry Rhubarb Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We need to talk about Evan.

Cas looked at the warding with admiration. “This is quite well done. You said it was an Ori?” The question was directed at Sam who was fidgiting.

“Focus Cas,” Dean ordered. “Why are angels hunting the girl?”

“Gibborim aren’t angles,” Cas said absently, still staring at the house.

Dean shook his head. “Then why are angel factory rejects hunting the girl? Explain it to me again. In smaller words”

“Her locking mechanism is incomplete.”

“Because she can’t talk? I never got the impression that mattered. They have to give actual consent. Only yes means yes.”

“It’s not quite that simple, Dean,” Cas explained patiently. “The ability to be an angle vessel is passed down from parent to child. Somehow, Evan got the ability but didn’t get the full spiritual protection that should have transferred with it." He glanced over at Sam again. "It's like an immunity. Infant’s usually get their mother’s immunities until they can grow their own. This is like that, but it would have been a transfer of soul. A mystical shielding passed from parent to child. Evan is growing her own, but she won’t be strong enough to drive off possession for years.”

“So," Dean rolled his hands gathering his thoughts,"Ronnie didn’t pass on her angel immunities,” he opened his arms in a open ask, “is there some kind of mystic vaccine we can use instaed?”

Cas looked at Dean sadly. “Veronica isn’t the parent with vessel blood.”

“So we get someone else." Dean said exasperated. "I’ll do it. I’m a vessel.”

Cas hesitated, he looked at the ground and then back up at Dean. “If the - vaccine - we create isn’t a perfect match for Evan, it is likely to be rejected. With dire consequences.”

“So we need the father,” Sam stated, rubbing the back of his neck. “Evan’s father, who has vessel blood, but whose soul didn’t give her the protection it should have.” 

“Yes,” Cas agreed, looking sideways at Sam. “He has to willingly give part of his soul to Evan. It’s an uncomfortable procedure. And Evan also has to willingly accept it. Otherwise, we could end up causing permanent damage. She has to completely trust the,” Cas flicked his eyes away from both Winchesters “the donor.”

“I don’t get the impression that he’s around,” Dean mulled. “And It’s not like you can just force a kid to trust her deadbeat dad with a couple of backyard barbecues. What if Ronnie got rid of him for a reason? He might not be the kind of dude we want Evan to trust.” Dean paced between the cabin and the woodpile frustrated. “I hate this stuff. Cas, start over and tell me why I can’t just kill everything?”

Cas looked seriously at Dean. “Did you know that Grasshoppers and locusts are the same insect? Gibborim are like grasshoppers. There are millions of them. They are always around. Alone they’re harmless, but with the right trigger they swarm. You can’t kill the swarm, Dean. It will overwhelm and devour everything in its path.”

Sam closed his eyes and tilted his face up to the sun. “I’ll talk to Veronica,” he said. “I’ll find out what she has to say about Evan’s father.”

Cas nodded. “I think that would be best.”

"I can trace him if she tells me his name," Sam said to Dean.

"Cas zaps him here, and then we make him behave," Dean agreed. "It's not the worst plan."

Sam loped off, up the stairs. Dean sighed and turned to Cas.

"This one's really doing a number on him, isn't it," Dean said to Cas.

Cas frowned at Dean and then blinked out and caught Sam on the stairs, blocking his way.

"Sam," Cas said, "you do understand how rare a combination of events had to occur to create Evan." 

Sam wrinkled his forehead in confusion. 

Cas continued "A father with vessel blood, but no soul."

Sam blinked at him. "Cas you aren't saying, I mean-" Sam looked around and leaned in conspiratorially, worry etched into his face. "Is that what you are saying?"

Cas tilted his head and stared at Sam exasperated.

# # #

Ronnie was folding clothes and humming when Sam finally knocked on the door frame behind her. 

“We need to talk,” he said to her back, awkward and hesitant, “about Evan.”

She looked over her shoulder at him and see in the look on his face became grim. She set her jaw and returned to the laundry. “You know, I was starting to think that you really didn’t have a clue.”

“I didn’t. It’s just, Cas, um,” Sam ran out of words before he managed to say anything.

Ronnie froze. She didn’t reply, or look at him. Her arms stiff at her side.

Sam rubbed the back of his neck. This was awkward. It would be easier if he could see Ronnie's face. in a moment of boldness his h walked around her and eased onto down on the bed, facing her and sitting in front of the laundry.

“That period of my life is kind of hazy,” he said, as sincere as he could be. “I wasn’t myself.”

“You remember enough,” she spoke lightly, but every inch of her body was still rigid with tension. “I was a jerk and I'm sorry.” He didn’t really know what to do with his hands. He rubbed at the top of his knees. “You tired to tell me, too, didn’t you. You kept calling after D.C. and I just thought,” Sam swallowed, “I mean, I should have answered no matter what, but I thought you were just going to... I mean you had every reason to yell at me. You still do. I know your still mad. And you should be mad. Really, really mad.”

“Can we please not have this conversation now. Or ever.” Ronnie walked to the other side of the bed and started putting unfolded laundry back in the basket. Then stopped and tumped it back out out. She sat down on the other side of the bed breathing heavily. 

Sam reached out with a half turn where he was sitting and grabbed her hand. “Ronnie what I did--” She flinched away, snatched back her hand and the words died in his throat.

“No. I get it," she said. "I really do. I don’t need hear whatever version of _it’s wasn't you, it’s me_ you are trying to lay out. I made it easy for you, which is on me, because I should have known better." Her word were clipped but her voice was wavering. She wouldn't look at him. "When you showed up in DC, I turned into a quivering college freshman. Instantly. I was full of wishful thinking and I got myself played.” She gave a little shrug and made a dismissive gesture with her hands.

Sam was baffled. “None of what I did, was your fault,” he said slowly, meaning every word. 

Veronica snorted. “I should have known it was all bullshit. I mean, I’m not your type. I never have been.”

“Ronnie, that’s not the way it happened.” Sam really didn’t know what to say. She looked ready to cry. His chest and shoulders wanted to reach out and hug her. It was an impulse that seemed completely independent of his brain. “You were one of my best friends at Stanford, and you’re great a girl, and it's just that when I didn’t have a soul, I did, things, that I normally wouldn’t have done.” 

“Right,” Ronnie said, her eyes sad and wet. “Of course. You didn’t have a soul. You wanted something and you used me to get it. It didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything.” She sniffled and looked away from him.

The instinct to pull her toward his chest and cradle her was almost overwhelming. God, he'd screwed this up. He swallowed hard and tried to calm his racing heart. He didn't have any right to touch her. Not after what he had done. Giving in to his baser impulses was what had caused all the trouble in the first place. When he thought he could speak normally, he tried again. “I'm trying to say that if I had been myself, everything would have been different.”

“Like I said Shaggy, I get it.” Ronnie swallowed hard, and wiped her eyes. His chest constricted and his stomach dropped to his knees. She looked over at him then. Making eye contact for the first time. She jutted out her chin proudly. “But you know what, I’m glad Evan is here.”

Sam nodded, but he wasn’t sure he was having the same conversation Veronica was. 

“This doesn't have to change anything,” she continued. “I don’t expect you suddenly become a part of our lives or anything. I mean, you’ve gotten us out of harms way, so mission accomplished.” She squared her shoulder and tried to smile at him but it looked more like a grimace.

Sam’s heart sank. Of course, she wouldn’t want him to be a part of Evan’s life. He didn’t deserve her trust. He realized he was clutching at the bedspread, wrapping the blanket up into a fist. He consciously worked to unfurl his fingers. “Cas says that I can give her part of my soul, and that will protect her,” he said slowly, smoothing out the bedspread.

Ronnie eyes got wide and she let out a small gasp. 

“It has to be me,” Sam continued, he looked down at the bed again. Why was it so hard to look at her now? “And she has to trust me.”

”Jesus, Sam.”

"I know it’s a lot to ask, but I," his throat was starting to close up, "I want to get to know her.” That was only the beginning of what he wanted. What he wanted was too big to fit into words. It felt too big for his chest. He thought holding it all in might break him, but what else could he do? He didn’t deserve anything. Even asking for time seemed like a transgression. “I need to get to know her, Ronnie." He looked up again, scared of what he would see in her face. "Are you okay with that?”

“Of course,” Veronica replied. She reached out and put her hand on top of his. “Anything to protect her. Anything." He hand was hot against his skin. It sent electric tingles up his arm and into his chest. He let go of a breath he didn't realize he was holding and smiled at Ronnie. Hopeful. She pulled her hand back, embarrassed and gave him a wary look. He didn't know how he'd screwed it up again. "We couldn't go anywhere, any way,” she said. wincing slightly and looking away. It was clear from her voice just how trapped she felt. There wasn't anything Sam could do to make it better.

# # # 

Sam wandered back into the kitchen heavy-hearted, he went straight to the fridge to look for a beer. There wasn’t any beer. Dean was attempting to teach Cas poker. Which should have been funny. If anything could have been funny at that moment.

“Dean, I understand bluffing.” Castiel said “I just don’t know why I would bother. I have no need for Planters Fun Mixed Nuts.”

“Well we could raise the stakes?" Dean said with a lopsided grin. "I win, you take off your coat and tie. You win, I’ll take off my boots.”

“I already have shoes," Cas said, confused. "And I would be happy to just lend you my coat.”

Dean tapped the deck of cards against the table straightening the side. “Worthless,” he mumbled “absolutely no point in trying.”

“Sam,” Cas said. “How did your talk with Veronica go. Did she, um, tell you who the father was?”

“Yeah,” Sam answered. His arms felt too long and his hands too big and clumsy, and there wasn't room in the kitchen for him at all. 

Cas nodded his head solemnly. “I knew bringing you in was the right thing to do.”

Sam squinted at Cas suspiciously. “How long did you know?”

“I wasn’t 100% percent sure.”

“So she’s a Nephilim or something?” Dean asked “One of your brothers getting busy behind your back, Cas?” He smirked at the angel who got suddenly bashful. 

“It isn’t my place to say,” Cas replied.

“Okay, fine. Be like that," Dean turned to his brother. "Spill the beans, Sammy.”

Sam’s throat was suddenly dry. “She's um, she's-" He hadn't said it out loud yet. Neither had Ronnie. He swallowed and looked away from Dean rubbing his hands on the side of his jeans."

Dean furrowed his brow and squinted at Sam. "You okay? She's not yours or anything right?"

Sam closed his eyes and felt it all wash over him. He wasn't going to be able to hold it together. He looked at Dean full of hope and dread that his brother would see it all in his face. He knew he was supposed to say something. He couldn't say anything.

Dean looked at Sam, standing silent in the kitchen on the edge of tears. Dean's eyes went wide. "Shit," he cursed under his breath and then looked over at Cas. Cas, nodded slightly. The barest yes.

"Okay," Dean said slapping the table. "We need to go on a beer run. Now.”

# # #

"She’s your daughter,” Dean repeated, turning the corner onto the highway.

“Yes,” Sam voice didn't crack this time.

“From when you didn’t have a soul?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure? Shouldn’t we get a blood test or something?”

“I’m sure. Cas confirmed it, you saw him.”

“Man,” Dean leaned back in his seat. “I never thought it would be you. I mean statistically, it was probably bound to happen, but you were always so careful. I’ve had way more sloppy drunk sex. Maybe I should get Cas to look around for me, too.”

“Well, there won’t be any Gibborim hunting them if they exist.” Sam looked out the window. Part of him agreed with Dean. This shouldn't have happened to him. This was not what he was like. He leaned his head against the cool glass of the window. 

Dean watched him, his mouth twisting in worry. "Look, it's not your fault she didn't tell you." Sam could feel that Dean was still thinking it through. Still putting all the pieces together. "Not really her fault either," Dean added after a moment, "considering the stunt you pulled when you knocked her up."

Sam dropped his face into his hands.

"I guess it really is soulless not to wear a condom," Dean concluded.

Sam rubbed at his face. He thought about telling Dean that Ronnie had left messages. Messages that he'd never listened to. What would have done if he had heard any of them? He was soulless at the time. He probably wouldn't have cared. But if he'd heard, he would have known. He would have looked for them as soon as he'd gotten his soul back. Seven years wouldn't have passed. But would that have been better? He shuddered slightly at the thought of Lucifer whispering in his head while he had a baby girl around. All the things that had happened, all the work they'd done in that time, how would he have done any of that if he'd known? He let out a long heavy sigh.

“Veronica said she doesn’t want it to change anything,” Sam said. He didn't know where else to start. 

“What does that mean? It changes everything.”

“I don’t think she want’s me involved. You either.” 

“This is family, Sam. She can’t keep you from your daughter!”

“Actually Dean, she can. What am I going to do? Sue for visitation? We’re legally dead in most of the country. I don’t even have an Id with my actual name on it. They're all fakes.” 

“But she’d your blood, man. She’s my blood.” Dean scowled at the steering wheel, and the road, and the entire world.

Sam closed his eyes. Evan was broken because of him. She was a target because of him. His weird life that involved going to hell, over and over again. He was the reason the monsters were swarming around her. 

“What if Ronnie’s right,” Sam said softly. “What if Evan is better off without me, us, and our...chaos.” 

“Don’t even think that.” Dean gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles turning white as the silence stretched. “Okay.” He said at last. “We’re not going to make any decisions yet. Evan is still in danger. After we get rid of the monsters, that we can figure out if its better for us to keep our distance.” 

Sam took a ragged breath, and ran his hands through his hair. “So what do we do? How do I get Evan to trust me?”

Dean tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. “Family barbecue? Wouldn’t be hard to grab supplies. We could hit the county line and get some sparklers, too.”

“Dean, you were just saying that shit didn’t work, like two hours ago.” 

“We gotta start somewhere, Sammy.” 

# # #

The sun was low in the sky. Sam had coaxed Evan onto his shoulders and he was running around the yard making whooshing noises as he ducked and swerved. Evan held onto his head and looked doubtful. She seemed unsure about the whole “airplane ride” endeavor. Dean figured she'd perk up when they got the out the sparklers and roman candles.

Ronnie and Cas were sitting on the porch, rocking slowly in their chairs. Ronnie looked rough. She was trying to hide her face behind some enormous sunglasses, but Dean was pretty sure she'd spent most of the afternoon crying. It stung. It did. He understood that the Winchester brothers were damaged goods, but still this should be good. A family coming together should be good. That's why he'd bought the Strawberry Rhubarb Pie. It was perfect example of taking something bitter and making it sweet. 

Dean worked the grill. He built burgers and handed them out, saving his own for last. He grabbed two beers when he was ready to sit down and eat and offered one Ronnie with a smile. She shook her head no. Her eyes were clearly read and puffy behind her sunglasses. Dean sighed. He could drink both. He deserved both.

Cas gave Dean a small nod. Dean nodded back. Cas at least wasn't being dramatic. And it was good to know that the angel was there. That he was watching out for Evan now, too. 

Dean settled in and watched Sam and Evan play. He was swinging her around in a circle by her arms, a big goofy grin on her face. She was letting out the terrified/exhilarated wail of a kid on a roller coaster. When Sam stopped she bent over like she was going to hurl for an instant, but Sam barely enough time to look worried before she lifted her arms in an insistent order to go again. Dean watched his brother smile. It was going to break Sam’s heart if Ronnie really did decide she didn’t want him near the girl. Sam would probably swallow it too, because Sammy always was a martyr. Dean stole a glance at Ronnie. He wanted to see how she was reacting to Sam and Evan playing. It made him nervous that she looked so sad. She hadn't eaten her burger either, just picked at the bun.

“You know,” Dean said leaning toward Veronica, “things would have been different if Sam hadn’t been soulless.”

Veronica turned to face him. Her brow furrowed a little, but most of her expression was hidden behind those damned sunglasses.

“Sam would have been there for his kid.” 

Her expression was still unreadable.

“Cas back me up here,” Dean said.

Cas glanced Dean, and then looked at Veronica seriously. “Family is very important to both Sam and Dean. Perhaps pathologically so. They have each put the world in great danger for the other. More than once. But I have come to view this as a virtue rather than a vice.” 

“Cas," Dean was frustrated, "you’re not helping. You’re supposed to tell her that Sam is responsible and sensitive, and that he’ll make a great father.” 

“Sam is responsible and sensitive and he’ll make a great father," Cas repeated. "In most circumstance.” 

“Cas you ruined it. You just. You ruined it, okay.” 

Dean stuffed his burger into his mouth.

Veronica looked from one man to the other. “How long have you two been a couple?” she asked

Dean gagged a bit. He had to hit his chest to get out the bit of burger that had slipped down the wrong pipe. 


	7. Old Fashioned Apple Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronnie let out an exasperated sigh. "Please go out into the world and kill something. Because I cannot have this,” Ronnie circled her palm in the general direction of Winchester brothers “barely repressed guilt and rage in my space any longer." 

Dean was running out of ways to pamper Baby. He’d changed all her fluids, polished the chrome and leather, washed and waxed every inch of her. He took a plug on his beer and rocked back and forth staring at her. Sam needed more time, so difficult as it was, he’d have to think of something else to do. 

Sam was in the rocking chair next to him, pensively nursing his own pilsner. 

The great trust assault had begun with books. Evan let Sam read to her for hours: Winnie the Pooh, Dr. Seuss, Dora the Explorer. So much fucking Dora. But it was like he was a teacher reading to a student.

He would sit on the floor, and she would hand him books after book from her pile. He’d smile and open his arms, inviting her to sit in his lap. She’d furrow her brow and make a disgusted face and then sit opposite him.

Sam was constantly being rejected in small, but persistent, ways. He was putting up a good front, but Dean knew it wore on him. Just watching it wore on Dean. He figured this must be what it was like to be a Cubs fan.

The screen door slammed and Ronnie sauntered out. She dropped a set of papers in Dean’s lap and leaned on the porch railing to face them. 

“Okay you grumpy old men, quit sulking and get out of here.”

Dean tried to hide the papers. He’d found a lead on a nest of vampires not to far from here. He figured he and Cas could take care of it themselves some night, when Sam hadn’t committed them all to play Candyland. Sam gave him a sour look. 

“This is our job, Dean, right here, Evan and the Gibborim,” Sam said. 

"Yeah, well, it’s slow.”

“I can’t believe you. 

“It’s not like Cas and I taking a couple of days to clear out a nest of vamps is going to screw with your bonding time.” 

“What if the locusts decide to swarm while your gone.” 

“It’s been three weeks and nothing's happened. The wards are working. Just, you know, keep everyone near the house.” 

Sam made a sour face and puffed his chest getting ready for a real argument. “So help me Dean—“

He didn’t finish because Ronnie kicked at his chair, breaking his flow. “Stand down, Shaggy. Stop fighting with your brother instead of dealing with me. I’m the one kicking you out of the house. Both of you.” 

Sam looked a little shell-shocked. “Ronnie, we can’t.” 

“Yes. Actually you can.” 

“It’ll happen,” Sam argued. Dean could see the panic on his face. “I’ve been doing research on child development and-”

“And hopefully one of those books explained to you that she’s a person and not an algorithm! It’s not input equals output, Sam,” Ronnie sighed. “She doesn't trust you because you’re desperate and being dishonest with her.”

“What!” Sam barked. “You’re the one who hasn’t told her I’m her father.” 

“She already knows!” Ronnie replied. “Why do you think Scooby-Doo is her favorite toy? What did you think that whole head-stomping pantomime was about?”

Sam deflated. Dean tried to be invisible. Sam was moody and tense and Dean didn’t know what to do. He was just glad he didn’t have to argue it out with him.

“Oh. My. God,” Ronnie said. “Did you think the name was going to be some kind of miracle? Didn’t Louisa explain that she’s Ori from your side of the family? Evan probably knows more about you than I do.”

“Oh, that’s not good.” Dean muttered. Sam and Ronnie both glared at him. Dean cocked and eyebrow, “What?! It explains some things.”

The tendons in Sam's neck throbbed. His mouth moved like a fish out of water. 

Ronnie scratched at her eyebrows. “Look Sam, I am 100% down with this whole angle cooties vaccination plan, but if you want Evan to trust you, you have to start being...you.”

“But I am!”

“Yeah, you’re a real Ward Cleaver.” 

Dean snorted. “Sorry,” he apologized when Sam glared at him. "Maybe I'll just go," Dean said starting to stand up, but Sam put a hand on his shoulder and kept him in place. Solidarity then.

“Sam you’re stubborn,” Ronnie continued, “so is Evan. She’s going to keep playing you like a slot machine because you underestimate her. She’s going to find all your limits, and break you. That’s what kids do.”

“She not going to break me. I’ve dealt with things way worse than a six year old.” 

“Really? And did you want any of those things to love you?”

Sam pressed his lips together and took a moment before answering. “This is the most important thing I can do. I’m not leaving.” 

Ronnie sagged. “You’re breaking my heart, Sam. These last few weeks you’ve been the perfect TV dad. But you’re also obviously miserable. You think she doesn’t notice?” 

“I’m not miserable.” 

Ronnie looked up at the sky. “Did I ever tell you about Evan’s Popsicle scam?” 

Sam and Dean looked at each other. 

“She was in kindergarten. She’d give her lunch money to a friend who then used it to buy two fudge pops. The friend would sit down and wait for Evan to go through the line. Evan meanwhile, would tear up like she was Oliver Twist and never fed. So they’d give her the free lunch, a plain peanut butter sandwich, which happens to be one of her favorites. Then she'd meet her friend and get the second fudge pop. There was a rotating group fighting to sit next to her at lunch. She organized this all with out speaking, too, keep that in mind.” 

“Baby girl’s got skills,” Dean said impressed. 

Sam cleared his throat. “I don’t understand.” 

“She is really, really good at reading people," Ronnie level her gaze at them. "The more you try and make this go fast, the more she is going to try and make this slow down. She get's the theater of it. You are going to leave one day. We aren't going to become a TV family. When Evan is fixed, we'll go back to our lives, and you'll go back to yours.” 

Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Veronica watched his face with single minded focus. Dean suddenly realized why Sam had kept him close.

“She's testing you," Ronnie continued, "And you are going to fail that test if you keep promising more than you can deliver. We’re not going to change her heart with lies. So lets figure out how to make this work honestly. She’s had friends whose fathers were in the army and this isn’t that different. They go away. They come back.” 

Sam’s breathing was a little ragged. Dean felt for him, an ache deep in his bones. Veronica had no idea what she was asking. Yeah, it probably was impossible for the Winchesters to have a old fashioned apple pie family life, but damn, Sam just wanted to be a good dad and he hadn’t even had a month with the girl yet. Talk about putting a spike into a man’s dreams. 

"I won't abandon her,” Sam said, the barest quiver in his voice. Dean resisted the urge to reach out and comfort him. 

“Okay,” Ronnie agreed. “Then don’t abandon her. Prove you'll come back. By. Coming. Back. Stop pretending that you're going to be a type of Dad that you are never going to be." 

Dean took another gulp of beer and snuck a sideways glance at Sam. The conversation they'd had about Ronnie keeping Evan away from them turning over in his head. Sam shifting in his seat uncomfortably, but didn't say anything. Dude had been on church behavior and it wasn't good enough. No wonder Sam had been picking so many stupid fights with him. 

Ronnie let out an exasperated sigh. "Please go out into the world and kill something. Because I cannot have this,” Ronnie circled her palm in the general direction of Winchester brothers “barely repressed guilt and rage in my space any longer." 

Sam gritted his teeth. If he had been arguing with Dean he would have insisted that he wasn’t angry, but his anger was obvious. He’d just discovered he had a kid. And that the kid didn’t trust him and didn't seem to like him. And if he didn’t get the kid to trust him, she might be swarmed by monsters. Monsters that were after her because of him. Monsters that he, a hunter, didn’t have a way to kill. It was like a perfect storm of things that made Sam either guilty or furious. 

“If you think that’s what’s best--” Sam murmured. Dean stiffened uncomfortably. Sam cared way to much about this to give in so easily. He must have a plan.

“It is,” Ronnie said curtly.

“But I’m not going to leave you two here unguarded. I have conditions.”

“Okay. Let’s hear it.” 

Sam laid out his terms and Dean swallowed a smile.


	8. Whole Wheat Veggie Tarts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Maybe it's not that bad.” Dean said before Sam could Sam could say anything.
> 
> “Not that bad?” Sam replied dubiously.
> 
> “You needed something to bond over right? You can talk to Evan about how you used to feel like a freak, too. But it's all better now. Well mostly better. Make it a teaching moment.”
> 
> “That is such a bad idea.”

“I am more likely to hurt myself than a bad guy,” Ronnie said, looking completely uncomfortable with the revolver in her hands. 

“That's more a reason to learn, not less,” Sam replied. “First your stance.” Sam took hold of Ronnie’s hips and squared her off. “Feet under your shoulders.” He tapped his foot against her feet until they were where he felt they should be. Then he reached around with his long arms and pulled her hands and the gun out in front of her. “Your arms should make a perfect isosceles triangle, straight and locked.”

“I know you think bringing math into this will make me feel better, but it doesn’t really help.” 

He pulled back his grin. “Look at the target with both eyes. See the gun, line it up, but don’t focus on it. Focus on your target. Breath.”

Ronnie took a deep slow breath. Sam held her arms in place, probably longer than he should have. His nose was in her hair and she smelled like rosemary. He pulled his hands back slowly, staying close behind her.

“When you’re ready, breath out and pull the trigger.” 

Ronnie nodded slightly and then took two more breaths before firing the gun. 

She missed the can.

Sam felt her shoulders tense against his chest and watched her moth twist in frustration. “Don’t get upset. And don’t lose your stance,” he said. “Take another breath and fire again.” 

# # #

Dean peeked out through the blinds, as Sam was teaching Veronica how to shoot. Louisa popped in next too him.

“It’s a waste of time and you know it,” the Ori said. “Magic is going to protect this house, not guns.”

“Well, call us overprotective, I like having both.”

“Tell me Winchester, how much trouble are you and your brother expecting?”

“Knowing our luck. All of it.”

“Sounds very Winchester to me.” She said his name like it was an insult.

“I don’t like your plan for Evan. I don’t think that she needs a Winchester intervention. I’ve talked to your angel and he says that she is growing her own psychic shields just fine. All she needs is time.” Louisa looked down her nose at Dean. 

“Well,” Dean gave her a cocky little smile, “it’s not your call.” 

Louisa smiled, too. “When you are back out there, on the highway, hunting, you will realize that you don’t have to come back.” She leaned into him, speaking softly and sweetly. “And that’s fine. We are fine without you.”

Dean set his jaw and spoke quietly. “Louisa, I have taken down monsters a lot more frightening than you. So this is not a threat, it’s just me stating a fact. If you try to get between Sam and his daughter, or me and my niece, I will end your existence on this mortal plane, now and forever.”

Louisa leaned back drawing a satisfied breath in through her nose. Then she winked out and Dean saw that Evan was standing in the doorway, looking at him seriously. Louisa rematerialized behind the girl and put a hand on her shoulder. 

“We had some doubts about your reliability,” Louisa said. She glanced down at Evan. “Are you satisfied child?” 

Evan tilted her head back and forth, and shrugged in a non-committal gesture.

“If you wanted to know something you could have just asked,” Dean said.

Evan furrowed her brow and gave Louisa a hard stare. Louisa barked in laughter. 

“What?” Dean asked. The Ori’s laughter made him slightly nervous.

“Evan points out that you and Sam both carry around several fake ids, constantly speak to each other in secret codes, avoid discussing your own family, and that both of your auras are permanently discolored by lying. She also found half a dozen Taylor Swift songs on a cassette that was labeled Black Sabbath. After you told her mother that you did not like Taylor Swift.”

“It was the curse thing, it wore off, when did you go through my music? Wait, go back, she sees auras? Is she psychic? Are you psychic, Evan?”

“The prospect bothers you?” Louisa looked concerned.

“Sam,” Dean fumbled, “he had some abilities, but mostly they just seemed to make him vulnerable to demons.”

Evan wrapped her arms around Louisa’s waist and the Ori patted her head tenderly. “Hush child, this is nothing new, and he is concerned about you, not angry. You haven’t messed anything up.”

“Right. Exactly. Nothing is messed up. I’m just worried about you.”

The child kept her face buried in Louisa’s caftan. Dean looked at the older woman for help. Louisa sighed.

“The child lives unshielded from all that is mystical, seeing auras is the least of it. There are many, many reasons she favors silence. I thought Castiel had explained this all too you.”

“He left some details out, apparently”

# # #

“I’m sorry, Dean,” Cas said “I thought you understood.”

Sam kicked the can they’d been shooting at out into the field as hard as he could.

“Well we didn’t understand and it’s not me you should be apologizing, too.”

“I am sorry, Sam. Perhaps this can be a bonding experience," Cas said turning to Sam. "You and Evan can share stories of your psychic experiences.”

“I am not going to talk to a seven year old girl about getting visions from Lucifer,” Sam replied. 

“Or demon blood fueled exorcisms,” Dean added. Sam glared at him. “What? I’m agreeing with you! It’s inappropriate.”

Sam paced back and forth and then sighed. “We’re going to have to call someone, we can’t go on a hunt now.”

“Nothing is different than it was yesterday,” Cas said confused.

“Yes, it is.” Sam said.

“Louisa will be very disappointed. She thinks that your presence is distributing Evans’ sleep. Evan swears that’s not true, but she has definitely gotten crankier over the last two weeks. Louisa says that is the most telling sign that she is tired—“

“You talk to Evan, Cas?” Dean interrupted him. “The same way Louisa does?”

“Yes. The girl is very articulate and” Cas paused, “spirited. She has an impressive vocabulary of insults and curses.”

“Why didn’t you tell us you could talk to Evan?” Sam asked

“Wasn’t it obvious?” Cas looked between the brothers confused.

“No. It wasn’t,” Dean replied.

“Why would our presence be disturbing her sleep?” Sam asked

“Evan says that your nightmares wander around the house at night being loud and generally annoying. She said it wasn’t a big deal, they don’t try to come into her room or bother her. It’s apparently a lot like the time they had raccoons living in the roof.” 

A series of sad emotions played across Sam’s face. Dean watched them tick by: fear, guilt, and a sad weariness that just pulled all his features down. Sam turned away from both of them and Dean knew he was trying his best not to cry. 

“Cas, dude, you’ve got to tell us stuff like this right away,” Dean said

“But Evan said—“

“You don’t let a seven year old decide what is and what isn’t a big deal. Okay? We clear on that?”

“Yes, Dean.”

“How much time does she need?” Sam asked, without turning around to look at them. His voice was cracked and low. “How long do we need to be gone?”

“I don’t know. I can ask Louisa,” Cas offered.

“It can’t be that long. I told you they ambushed me to make sure that we were serious about coming back,” Dean said, attempting to reassure his brother.

“You don’t let a seven year-old decide, right?” Sam had swallowed any tears he might have wanted to cry, but Dean could still hear the grief rattling around in his chest. He nodded in agreement. 

“Cas,” Dean said, “You’ve got to promise me that for however long we are on the road you are going to make watching over Veronica and Evan a priority. Number one on the to do list. Even before us. You promise me that.”

“Yes, Dean.”

“Does Ronnie know?” Sam asked.

“We just decided that I would stand guard so I imagine not,” Cas replied

“No!” Sam pulled his hands back and pinched it into a fist. “Does Ronnie know that Evan see auras or that she’s been listening in on our nightmares?”

“I think so. But I understand that Evan finds the situation very embarrassing. I was not supposed to know. She said some very cruel things about the state of my wings, when I first started my inquiry. Louisa says that I shouldn’t take it personally. But they were quite personal insults.”

Dean looked at Sam. Sam looked at Dean.

“You think that’s why Ronnie wants us to go hunting?” Dean asked.

“Don’t you?” Sam replied.

“So, are we going or not?”

Sam sighed, running his hands through his hair.

“Look,” Dean said, “It’s shitty that she wasn’t honest with you. You’re Evan’s father you deserve to know. But she’s not wrong that you and I get, antsy, when we’re cooped up to long. And either way it's sounds like it would be better for Evan if we were gone for a while.”

Sam nodded, and looked down and the ground. He looked up sadly after a moment and Dean knew what his brother was thinking. Guilt and helplessness were written on every feature of his face.

“Maybe it's not that bad.” Dean said before Sam could Sam could say anything.

“Not that bad?” Sam replied dubiously.

“You needed something to bond over right? You can talk to Evan about how you used to feel like a freak, too. But it's all better now. Well mostly better. Make it a teaching moment.”

“That is such a bad idea.”

# # #

“Those aren’t pies,” Dean said. “They don’t count.”

“They have crusts and fillings and I baked them in the oven.” Ronnie replied, wrapping the whole wheat veggie tarts for the cooler.

“They are filled with vegetables.”

“Have you tried one?” She asked holding a tart out for him. 

Dean took it from her hand. “I am only eating this because I am hungry, I am not giving up beer space for fake pies.” He bit into the tart and caught the bits of crust that flaked away with his fingers. He closed his eyes not wanting Ronnie to see how they rolled back with pleasure. “What is that? Rosemary?”

“Sam likes them, too.” Ronnie said. “But I also made sandwiches, sausage popovers, and” the oven dinged, interrupting her. She smiled and pulled a tray out of the over. “chocolate chip cookies.”

Dean melted looking at the tray. “Cookies?”

“So, why don’t we put the beer in the trunk, and food in the cooler, and then you can drink when you stop driving, instead of while you are still on the move.”

“This is an ambush.” 

“But an ambush with cookies!” Ronnie smiled at Dean. 

From across the room Sam could see that his brother was going to give in. He’d probably hold out for last night's leftovers as well, but he wasn’t going to refuse the food. They’d buy extra beer on the road.

He noticed that Evan was watching the negotiations as well. He wondered what she saw. She was drawing in that stickfigure way that children did. It was a picture of Dean, with his arms raised up over his head. At least he thought it was a picture of Dean. The figures short hair was sticking straight up from his head in a brown squiggle and it was wearing a plaid shirt. He wondered what Dean’s aura looked like to the girl.

Evan looked up at him. She had an expression he hadn’t seen on her face before. Not frustrated, or angry, or determined. She looked vulnerable. Frightened. Sam wondered if she could read his mind. 

“You know,” Sam started. “I saw things other people couldn’t see when I was younger, too. I’d get visions and headaches, and it was terrible. Is that what it's like for you?”

Evan shook her head _No_.

“No headaches? So it doesn’t hurt you?”

Evan shook her head _No_ , again.

“Can you show me? Can you draw for me how you see Dean?”

Evan furrowed her brow and then pushed a piece of drawing paper toward Sam.

“You want me to draw, too? I don’t have visions all the time. And the ones I have, they aren’t, they aren’t something a child should have to see.” He pushed the paper back to her.

Evan pushed the paper at him again.

“This has to be _quid pro quo_ huh?”

Evan nodded seriously.

“Okay.”

Sam started at his page, figuring out what he should draw. He didn’t intend to draw what he really saw. But then again, if Evan was reading his mind, he couldn’t outright lie. He picked up a red and started drawing flames. That was real but also generic. He glanced up at Evan but she was hiding her paper from him. So he just kept drawing. He filled the paper with a field of red and orange, his mind emptied as his hands fell into the repetitive motion of rubbing the long side of the crayon across the paper. Once he’d filled the page, he outlined some of the flames in black. Without really thinking about it he added, a few dangling chains and a small black box in the middle. Then he realized with shock and horror that he’d drawn a picture of Lucifer’s cage in hell. 

Evan tapped the table to get his attention, and he balled up the paper in his hands. She gave him a suspicious look. 

“It’s not,” Sam started as Evan squinted at him. “It’s not a good picture and I don’t want to show you.”

Evan leaned back pulling her own drawing toward her. She crumpled it up angrily, glaring at Sam the whole time, and then walked over and threw it in the garbage can before storming off to her room. 

“Honey?” Ronnie called after her. “Don’t you want a cookie? They’re at the perfect warmth?”

Sam scrambled to the trash can and dug out the paper. There was Dean as before, arms held up, but now in the middle of them was what looked like a giant chocolate chip cookie floating over his head. Underneath him was the interesting part. Evan had filled the space with jagged black lines like knives or snapping jaws. They came up on either side of the paper as if they were going to close around the stick figure of dean, but there were a pair of ragged and stick like blue wings holding them apart. All around Dean was a yellow-green cloud that was cracked by black and orange lines.

“What you got there Sammy?” Dean asked, his mouth still full of cookie. 

Sam handed over the drawing. “That’s how Evan sees you.”

“Christ” 

Ronnie took the paper. “Huh,” she said looking at the image for a long time. “I guess all I actually needed to make was the cookies.” She put the drawing down on the counter and kept packing food into the cooler.

“This doesn’t bother you?” Sam asked.

Ronnie nostrils' flared. “I told you she was really, really good at reading people didn’t I? She’s been drawing pictures like this her whole life. I’ve already been through the rounds of terrified visits to child psychologists and the CPS review to see if I was abusing her. Evan is who she is, she sees things. 

"You should have told us. You should have told me."

Why so you could make her feel more ashamed than she already does? Terrify her by flipping out? I'd rather throw you two out of the house?" Ronnie put her hands down on the counter and glared at Sam, "Oh wait, I did that. And I did it without making it her fault."

"I am not flipping out!"

"Really? Cause I notice you didn't share your drawing," she pointed at the wade of paper bunched in his fist. 

Sam looked at Dean who was watching the fight like an umpire at a tennis match. It was a pleading look. Dean closed his eyes and rolled toward Veronica, bracing himself to join the fight.

"Ronnie," Dean said, "you don't want to know what's in our heads. Evan shouldn't have to know what's in our heads."

Ronnie let out a snort of bitter laughter. “Wait here,” she said. “Don’t eat all the cookies.”

Dean nodded, but he reached for another cookie as soon as her back was turned. Sam slapped his hand away from the tray.

Ronnie returned carrying fat folder full of children's art. She flicked through the pages and pulled out a picture, putting it on the counter. It was a stick figure of Sam. At least it was more Sam than Dean because it had long hair. The figure was inside a protective circle of books. Outside the circle were flames and chains. The Sam figure had a round sad face.

“Son of a bitch,” Dean said looking at the drawing. Ronnie put three more down, each one less structured than the last. They got redder and wilder and more obviously pictures of hell as she pulled them out.

Ronnie pulled out one last drawing. It was mostly squiggles. But among the squiggles was a black car that could have been the Impala. "She drew this when she was three."

Sam looked at Dean. He was feeling a little wobbly. Dean put an arm out to steady his brother. 

Ronnie watched both of them carefully. "It's a lot," she said. "I didn't know how to tell you and frankly I didn't trust how you'd handle it."

Sam felt winded. It was a sucker punch driving all the air out of his chest. Dean winced a little himself. 

"So what do we do?" Dean asked. 

“I know you want to protect her,” Ronnie said. She swallowed and sucked in her lips like her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I want to protect her, too. But with Evan, most of the time, all you can do is comfort her.” 

Ronnie put four cookies in a paper towel. She stepped around Dean and offered them to Sam. When he reached out to take them she touched his wrist gently. She held his hand in hers, and he was thankful for the touch. 

“I know it feels like failure,” she said looking up at him “At least it feels that way to me, when cookies are all I have left. I want to do more. And we are going to do more. But, right now, it means something to Evan, knowing that her family is here for her, that we love her, that we don’t judge, that she’s not alone." She reached up and pet Sam's cheek, smoothing down his panic with her temple to his thumb. "You should have shown her your picture, Sam. It's just crayon. She's not going to hold it against you.”

Sam opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Thoughts were spinning in his head. He suddenly wondered about Evan's music collection. About her eye rolling. About her reaction when she'd first realized he was _her mom's_ shaggy. He wondered if she'd had some connection to him all this time, some unsheilded psychic bond. Then he wondered how much she'd seen and how much of what she'd seen she might have understood. He felt unmoored, lost in the possibilities.

Dean groaned, and Sam realized his brother was probably thinking all the same things. Sam looked at Dean. Dean rubbed his index finger against his eyebrow and shook his head. "Shit, Ronnie. This is..."

"Yeah" she said, dropping her hand from Sam's cheek and turned back around to face dean. She still had one hand tied to Sam with the cookies, in between. Sam didn't let that go.

Dean sighed and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "You've done a really good job. Considering all of this." He waived at the drawings. "Evan's a lot more normal than I would expect."

Sam's choked. Ronnie squeezed his hand. But she stayed turned toward Dean. She gave the older Winchester a wry smile. "I totally earned my world's best mom mug."

Dean snorted. "No argument here. I guess the kid is tougher than she looks, too."

"She's a Winchester," Ronnie replied, and Dean's attention snapped to her face. He was looking for something and he must have found it, because after a moment he gave a slight not of agreement. 

"That she is," Dean looked over the top of Ronnie's head at Sam. "She's definitely a Winchester." Sam wasn't sure why but somehow it worked. Evan was a Winchester. That was something to hold onto. 

Ronnie turned back around to Sam. "Take her the cookies," she said, and gently pushed Sam in the direction of Evan’s room. 

# # #

Sam knocked on Evan’s door. She didn’t answer, so he pushed it open. She was sitting in the middle of a circle of stuffed animals. Sam couldn’t tell if she was having a tea party, giving a lecture, or possibly casting a spell.

“Can I join you?” Sam asked. “I brought cookies.”

Evan gave him a long hard stare and then a short nod _Yes._ He sat down on the floor next to her, just outside the circle of animals and spread the cloth with cookies on the ground between them, like a picnic. Evan picked up the biggest one and started eating it.

“I’m sorry,” Sam said. “We made a deal and I backed out of my end.”

Evan tilted her head up toward him, listening. 

“I didn’t like my visions,” Sam said. “I didn’t like what I saw, and I don’t want you to see anything like that either. I’m working on a way to stop it, for you. Something that will protect you.” 

Evan nodded. She looked at him for a long time in silence. Then leaned around and picked a book off the shelf, and handed it to him.

“Angelina Ballerina,” Sam said. “Good choice.” He opened the book, fully in teacher mode, ready to read it to Evan and her dolls as if they were in a class. Then she unexpectedly crawled into his lap, putting her back to his chest. She turned to the first page and looked up at him expectantly. Sam started to read. It felt right to have Evan tucked inside his arms like this. Right now at this moment, he could protect her from all the bad out there in the world. It wasn't enough. It was everything. He read slowly. putting all the feeling he could into the words. When he got to the last page he was reluctant to turn it.

"Maybe we should read another one?" he said. Evan looked up at him and nodded. She pointed to the stack on her bedside table and Sam reached out to grab the next book. "Madeline," he read. And Evan nodded. Then suddenly she twisted around wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed his cheek. Sam wrapped his own arms around her and squeezed back as hard as he dared. He took a deep breath. It felt like the first real breath he'd had in hours. Too soon, Evan let go, turned around and snuggled back down again. Ready for her story.

"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines..." 

He read her book after book, until she fell asleep in his arms.


	9. Champagne Vinegar Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Veronica closed her eyes and swallowed. “This is weirder and harder than I thought it would be. Come back safe, please”
> 
> “Nothing’s killed us yet. At least not permanently.”

Sam stood at the bottom of the porch steps while Ronnie stood at the top. Dean gunned Baby’s engine impatient to get going.

“We don’t have to go,” Sam said, ignoring the sound of his brother’s impatience. His afternoon with Evan had felt like a break-through.

“Yes, you do,” Ronnie replied. “It won’t be long, and she still needs time away from all the psychic baggage you and Dean carry. We’ll skype. It won’t be that bad. 

“Easy for you to say.”

Ronnie chuckled. Sam sighed. 

“I left the revolver in your room and the shotgun is in the cabinet above the fridge,” he said. “Don’t forget to check the salt lines every night okay?”

“We’ll be fine. I don’t think that there is any chance I will need to use a gun.”

“You should still practice your shooting, both the revolver and the shotgun.”

“Last time I practiced with the shotgun it knocked me on my ass.”

“But you hit the can,” Sam said with a smile. “Put your back against the wall if you have to.”

Ronnie took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Okay I heard a podcast about this. Pessimistic planners that work through all the worst case scenarios to make sure they are prepared for everything that could happen.”

“I don’t think that’s pessimistic, it’s just planning.”

“Sam, while you are gone, I will not be backed against a wall with a shotgun. It’s just not going to happen. The only monsters that give a crap about us are Gibborim and we’ve kept them at bay for seven years, without firearms.”

“You are probably right,” Sam conceded, “but stranger things have happened.”

“Okay. I will practice everyday you’re gone, if it makes you feel better.”

“It does. It makes me feel better.” Sam gave her a shy smile.

Ronnie took in a deep breath. “And as long as we're being honest, about our irrational behaviors, I want you and Dean to take these.” She pressed two mojo bags into Sam’s hand. “Even if you throw them into the glove compartment, it will make me feel better to think you have them. Sympathetic magic.”

Sam bounced the bags gently in his hand thinking about what Dean would say. 

Ronnie rolled her eyes. “You can tell Dean this is all Cas and Louisa approved. I cook when I’m emotional and this is just another kind of recipe.”

Sam chuckled. “Well since Cas has given his stamp of approval, I guess it's pretty safe.”

“Yeah, pretty safe," Ronnie repeated shaking her head. "That phrase is gonna be inscribed on my headstone. Good old Ronnie, she was always pretty safe. Though I guess, pretty safe magic, sounds way more dangerous than pretty safe prom date.”

Sam smiled too, his lips curving mischievously. “It’s definitely different.” 

Ronnie blushed. "So while I was cooking those I also ended up making champagne vinegar pie. I thought it could be a surprise, but that seems like a really dumb idea now. You should know it’s there because it’s not the type of pie that can sit in a car all day. Sorry. I’m babbling.” 

Sam raised an eyebrow “Do I want to know how pie and hex bags connect?” 

“Some of the hoodoo ingredients had to be cured. So there's the vinegar. And I wasn’t going to let the eggs inside the shells go to waste, so there's the pie. It didn't have to be champagne vinegar, but Louisa thought the Orisha’s would like the kick, and you and I have champagne in-jokes, or at least we used, too. So that ups my sympathetic contribution.” 

Sam furrowed his brow and looked at her with confusion. “In-jokes?”

“Nick and Nora Charles. Thin Man. You actually aren’t that far from Nick, though I guess that makes Dean, Nora." She paused listening to what she had just said. "We probably shouldn’t tell him.” 

A bark of laughter escaped Sam throat. He stuffed the bags into his pocket with a guffaw. “No, probably not.” 

A light silence settled over them as if they were each waiting for the other to say something. Sam thought the twilight made Ronnie’s eyes look like a duskier blue than usual, less tropical reef and more cornflower. 

Veronica closed her eyes and swallowed. “This is weirder and harder than I thought it would be. Come back safe, please”

“Nothing’s killed us yet. At least not permanently.”

She rolled her eyes, pouted her lips, and did her best New York, blue blood, Myrna Loy accent. _“Don't say it like that, Nicky! Say it as if you mean it!"_

 _“Well, I do believe the little woman cares,”_ Sam quoted a tipsy William Powell.

Ronnie flipped her hair, still in character. _“I don't care! It's just that I'm used to you, that's all.”_

Sam chuckled. Quoting Thin Man dialogue with Ronnie. Again. They’d been so pretentious as college kids. They were only an arm’s length apart. She was standing two steps above him, but her face was still tilted upward. He should get going. Dean was waiting in the car. There were monsters in world that needed hunting. But he was happy and he wanted to keep talking to her.

“When I imagined a life full of booze and mystery and adventure.” Ronnie said. “It was not this life. I guess that’s why Nick and Nora never had kids. Not that I would trade any of it.”

“I’m sure you would trade some of it.”

“Okay, yeah, I’d trade some of it.” Ronnie smiled at him and he smiled back at her. “Nothing that got me Evan, though.”

“Really?” Sam looked at her skeptically. 

“I’m not saying you aren’t better with your soul than without. Just,” she looked down at the ground and then back up at him, vulnerable and soft. “Just, I know Evan wouldn’t be here any other way, so I don’t have any regrets about how things played out. And I’m glad that she’s getting to know you. You’re a good man, Sam Winchester. At least you are when you have your soul.”

“Just a minor caveat, eh?” 

“Tiny.”

The memory of DC shivered over him. It was there in the twilight and the pink of her cheeks. Veronica standing on the steps of the Jefferson Memorial, cherry blossoms glowing in the floodlights. 

There was a muscular greed in his arms. They wanted to reach out and pull her into a kiss. He could almost taste her against his lips. The light from the cabin highlighted her silhouette, the hourglass curve of her breasts into her waist and then out again at her hips. He felt an itchy tingling in his hands as he remembered how her hips fit into his palms, how he could lift her and hold her with one hand while the other wrapped into her hair. His groin shifted at the memory of her legs wrapped around him. 

His brain said _Stop._ His body didn't listen.

His heart, caught somewhere between mind and body, skipped a beat because it didn’t know what else to do. 

He ran his hands through his hair to keep them busy.

“Are you okay?” Ronnie asked. “You just got kinda pale.”

“I’m fine. Just, you know, it was a crazy day.” 

He wasn’t fine. He wasn't okay at all. Ronnie looked at him worried. He thought she might reach out and pet his cheek again. Smooth her thumb against his temple. Dig her hands into his hair and pull him in for a kiss. A greedy, desperate kiss, murmuring his name and telling him how much she wanted him. How she'd wanted him for years and thought he'd never notice her. Never realize. 

"Sam?" she said. "I think I lost you there for a moment."

"Yeah, uh sorry, just uh, um," Sam tried to squelch his panic. "Dean’s waiting in the car. I should go."

"Okay." 

"Okay" he agreed. Secretly hoping that she'd offer to kiss him goodbye. She didn't

He ran toward the clarity of the Impala. Glancing back over his shoulder he saw all the different versions of Ronnie superimposed: his college buddy; the sharp professional; the woman who’d looked at him naked and trembling with hope; the woman that had scratched at his back and yelled his name in joy; and this new person, the mother of his child, who only half trusted him. 

Sam felt too much. Overwhelmed, he suddenly didn’t know what he felt at all. He climbed into the passenger seat, eager to get on the road. 

“What was all that chatter about?” Dean asked.

“She put a pie in the car, she was worried that we wouldn’t notice it and it would go bad.”

Dean twisted in his seat and cursed. “Chinese fire drill. Now.”

Sam rolled his eyes, got out of the car and jogged around to the driver’s side while Dean picked the pie up off the floor boards and slid into the passenger seat.

“Are you going to eat that whole thing?” Sam asked, sitting down again.

“I’m going to try. Look there are plastic forks taped to the bottom.” He peeled off the saran wrap while Sam pulled them out onto the road. “Jesus,” Dean moaned swallowing his first bite.

Sam let the rhythm of the road wash over him. He tried to keep his breathing even and avoid thinking about DC. He focused on the hypnotic and steady pacing of the lane dividers blinking by. 

“It’s a shame Dad never got to meet Ronnie,” Dean said, his mouth full. “He would have liked her.”

“Yea, he would have been sending her things to translate every other week.”

Dean furrowed his brow “I thought she did art history, not languages.”

“There’s a lot of overlap. There's overlap with everything we do, folk lore and symbolism, and there's a whole branch of art history just devoted to religious icons. Ronnie, was better at Latin than I was.”

“Really?” Dean licked his fork. “Anything else?”

“Greek, Russian, all of the Romance languages. She’s a polyglot.”

“A what?”

“A person with a gift for languages.”

“And here I thought all her talents were culinary.” Dean licked his fork. “When actually she’s a woman of letters”

“No!” Sam said it so fast he caught himself off-guard. Dean furrowed his brow. “She had a life before us, a real life, without monsters," Sam continued. "We’re working to get her and Evan back to that. We are not going to keep them on the hook to help us hunt. That's part of why I never told Dad about her. Tell me you understand, Dean.”

“Stand down, Shaggy. I think you're overacting.”

“Dean!” Sam growled.

“She lives with an Ori, cooks hex bags, and has been fighting monsters for years! I’m not suggesting we send her out into the field, but she’s been involved with the supernatural for a hell of a long time, she’s not going to forget it exists even if we never ask her for help.”

Sam ground his jaw.

“Maybe” Sam paused “Maybe we should ask Cas to make them forget about us? Like Ben and Lisa?”

Dean blinked for a moment. “Wow. I mean, wow.”

They sat in silence for a long minute. 

“Do you really need me to lecture you on why that’s a bad idea?” Dean asked at last, exasperated.

Sam stared at the road. Ben hadn’t been Dean son, as much as they both wanted that. Dean stepping out of the picture hadn’t denied the boy a father. And Crowley let Ben and Lisa go after they forgot about Dean, but Evan was a different kind of leverage. Maybe. Sam remembered Dean's anguish about leaving Ben and Lisa, in a blurry faded sort of way. He hadn’t had his soul during the time. Other people's emotions hadn't really existed. The technicolor worry he was feeling driving away from Evan and Veronica right now felt unique and unprecedented.

Dean sighed. “You’re little girl is psychic and worried about rejection and you still have to convince her to trust you. If she somehow reads that you want to mess with her head we will never bring her around. You see that at least don’t you?”

Sam nodded. He saw that at least.

Dean took another bite of his pie. Silence settled over the car, but both brothers were still twitchy. Dean eventually finished the pie and then slept while Sam drove on through the night. Sam pulled over at about 3 a.m., too tired to keep going. Dean roused when the engine went silent.

“Time for a shift change?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

Sam walked around the car to stretch his legs as Dean slid over into the driver's seat.

“Hey,” Dean asked as Sam climbed back into the car. “You got any other old genius girlfriends you hid from me and Dad?”

“No,” Sam replied exhausted. “Just Ronnie.”

“Shame,” Dean said, “I dreamt that we were traveling around the country gathering up Winchester kiddos for a little league team.”

Sam rolled his eyes and sighed. He kept his jaw tight and his thoughts to himself. Dreams washed over him slowly, his head pressed against the window. They started with sugar, a sweet cream smell pouring out of the library's oven. Ronnie handed him a pie and he took it without burning his hands. It shrunk to the size of a champagne glass and he spilled it on her apron. So she took off the apron, standing before him nervously pushing her glasses up her nose as her breasts trembled in the cool air, and cherry blossoms got stuck in her hair. He kissed Ronnie instead of doing his homework, rolling her body against his. She pushed him back into a pile of warm fresh laundry that scattered like leaves. Climbing on top of him, she laughed and pushed the hair back from his forehead and kissed his temples, and it made him want to cry. He knew that it wasn't enough, she hadn't accepted his apology. She ground against him and he knew he wasn't enough. Ronnie took Evan hand and the two off them skipped off through the stacks. He tried to chase them. He couldn't catch up. The books tumbled down around them in a steady, blinking, rhythm. 


	10. Pizza Pie for Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you want children?” Cas asked Dean.

“Do you want children?” Cas asked Dean.

There was a slight break in the stream of syrup Dean was pouring over his pancakes as he looked up startled. With a determined little flick of his wrist, Dean set the syrup in motion again. 

“It’s a bit early in our relationship to talk about that isn’t, Cas? Shouldn’t we argue about drapery first? Or settle the great pancake vs. waffles debate?”

“Waffles.”

“Traitor.”

Cas furrowed his brow. “I feel like have known you long enough to discuss personal issues. You were very attached to Ben Braeden. There was a time I was convinced you wanted children badly. Now I am not sure.”

Dean sighed. “I’m not sure either, Cas.”

Castiel cocked his head to side and leaned forward across the diner’s table. Dean knew that the angel wanted him to say more, but what was there to say. He spread syrup and butter around on his plate. Let everything get good and soaked.

“Bringing a baby into this world is an act of insanity. Plain and simple. There are monsters, there are dangers, there’s politics, and global warming.” Dean cut a forkful off of his short stack and stuffed it into his mouth.

“So you don’t want children.”

“I didn’t say that,” Dean mumbled through the food in his mouth. 

“You just said that bringing a baby into the world was an act of insanity.”

“Every moment of my life is an act of insanity, Cas. But I don’t have the equipment to have babies on my own, so I’ll just let Sammy pop them out for a while.”

“You think Veronica should have more children with Sam. She doesn’t seemed inclined. But I know that you truly value sibling bonds. Maybe I should get a cupid involved. ”

Dean had to beat his chest to knock the pancake out of the wrong windpipe. “Figure of speech Cas. No cupids! Leave them alone alright. Say that you understand me? No cupids.”

“I understand. No cupids.”

“Good” Dean took a swig of coffee.

“I have been thinking about having children, myself recently,” Cas said, and Dean barely avoided spewing his coffee out of his nose. 

“What?”

“I think it was after the last encounter with Claire that the idea really took root. The hardest part would be preserving this vessel. Or I could abandon this form and pick a new one.”

“You can have babies, Cas? How, um, does that work?”

“Angels don’t start out as babies not in the human way, we arrive fully formed, but very young and inexperienced. I have placed unique section of my waveform into the collective, ones I thought would add value to new angel. But I don’t actually even know if the resonances were ever incorporated into a new form. If I hosted the gestation, I could choose the initial aspects.”

“How do you gestate a multidimensional wavelength of celestial intent”

“The newly formed Angel would be enfolded in my being and would observe my actions, until it gained enough knowledge to operate independently. We are often very close to those that first train us.”

“And how long does that take?”

“Ten years is common. Though occasionally it takes longer.”

“Ten years? Cas that’s ridiculous!”

“Ronnie says she expects to be meddling in Evan’s life until she in her 30s, and John certainly provided you and Sam with direction and advice through your early 20s. Ten years before the total independence of child seems quite reasonable to me.”

Dean didn’t really know what to say so he munched on his pancakes and bacon.

“One of the main reasons Nephilim were banned was that they occupied Angels for hundreds of years. Children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren….It was always so unclear when humans, or even half-humans, could be left alone and unguarded. I can tell already that Evan is going to tether me to this earth even after you and Sam are gone. It is a confusing feeling.”

Dean raised his eyebrows at Cas. It warmed the cockles of his heart to think that Cas would be looking out for Evan the rest of her life. He smiled at the man across the table and speared another forkful of pancake.

“Maybe Veronica will make you Evan’s Godfather,” Dean said. “If you are going to watch over her after we’re gone I won’t even fight you for it. And you don’t want me to fight you for it.”

Castiel nodded solemnly. “I will do my best. Perhaps one day I will have the honor to watch over your children, too.”

Dean shifted uncomfortably in his seat, but didn’t say anything. He didn’t get the chance because while the words were still churning in his head Sam walked in a joined them. He pulled up a chair, flipped it backwards, and sat at the end of the booth. He was clutching his laptop. 

“So Ronnie’s gonna call any minute now and we’re going to skype and I thought at first that I should do it alone, in the room, but then I started thinking about all the ways a video call with a kid like Evan might go wrong--”

“Because she doesn’t talk like you do,” Cas said.

“We’ll totally be your backup,” Dean added.

“Great,” Sam said with a sigh. “Thanks.” He pushed some of the dishes aside and opened the laptop on the table typing through various screens. His phone rang and he slid it over to Dean. Dean wiped his hands and answered. 

“Hey Ronnie, he’s setting something up on the computer.”

“Call her back on your phone, I’m going to need mine to make a hot spot,” Sam said.

“Can I call you back, Sam needs his phone for some computer thing. Okay.” Dean hung up and slid Sam’s phone back to him and then called Ronnie. She answered right away. “So how does this work? What are we going to talk about?” he paused, briefly, “I mean I don’t know jack about Dora and all we’ve talked about for the last 48 hours are vampires.”

“And my new desire to have children,” Cas said.

Sam froze, his head snapping toward Cas, then he glanced at Dean. Dean gave a little nod, then shrugged. Sam’s eyebrows flew up toward the ceiling. Dean rolled his eyes and shifted in his seat, turning slightly away from Sam, who suddenly seemed to remember he was supposed to be working on the computer.

“Cas wants to be Evan’s Godfather by the way.” Dean said into the phone. Sam’s typing paused again, but Dean wasn’t looking at him. “No, it’s not Sam’s idea. I haven’t even talked to Sam about it. It’s all Cas.”

“Tell her to try Skype now,” Sam said. 

# # #

There was a dinging on the computer and then Veronica’s face was on the screen.

“I see you!” Dean said.

“I see you, too,” she replied. “That’s why I’m hanging up.”

“Where’s Evan?” Sam asked. He quickly scanned the room behind Veronica for anything that might be out of place.

“Pouting. I interrupted her Ninja Turtle marathon for this, and she is not pleased with me. But I strongly suspect that once she hears your voice she’ll find her way back into the room.”

“Saturday morning cartoons! Which turtle is her favorite?” asked Dean.

“April is her favorite,” Ronnie answered.

“I liked the Wonder Pets show. Are these ninja turtles similar to Tuck the Turtle?” asked Cas.

“Wonder Pets is for babies Cas, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are badass and they fight crazy monster alien robots,” Dean said.

“That doesn’t sound very appropriate for children.”

“It’s everything every kid loves!”

Sam tilted his head and squinted at the screen. He could just make out Evan peeking around the top of the couch. Ronnie noted the direction his eyes were going. He opened his mouth to say something, but Ronnie caught his eye and shook her just slightly _no_ and gave him a tight smile. 

“The Wonder Pets always demonstrate kindness, bravery, and good teamwork,” Cas argued. “They also introduce children to a wide variety of human cultures, music styles, and animal species. It is both educational and very entertaining.”

“The ninja turtles have katanas and nunchucks,” Dean countered. “They have a running joke about pizza.”

“How is a running joke about pizza educational or valuable to a child?”

“Pizza jokes are lunchroom gold.”

“What if the school isn’t serving pizza on that day?”

“That doesn’t matter. Then you just joke about how much better pizza would be,” Dean grinned like the canary that just ate the cat.

Cas furrowed his brow and frowned grumpily. “I still like the Wonder Pets better. Their songs are very catchy. Do the Ninja Turtles sing?”

“No, of course they don’t sing, Cas! They’re ninjas!”

“There were several teams of Ninja that traveled feudal Japan as musicians and acrobats. It allowed them to move freely between hostile provinces. If these ninja turtles can’t sing, then they are inferior ninja.”

Evan was leaning over the back of the couch now listening in unselfconsciously. Sam was exceedingly happy that Cas and Dean were filling the dead air with inane conversation. If they weren’t arguing about kids TV he’d have no idea what to say to Ronnie while Evan hid in the background. 

“Sam?” Ronnie asked, pulling his attention away from Evan. He might have been staring, silently willing her to come closer to the computer and interact. Say something. Wave her hands around “What’s your opinion, Wonder Pets or Ninja Turtles?”

“Ah, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Wonder Pets, so Ninja Turtles kind of win by default?”

“The new one is different than when we were kids. Have any of you watched it yet?” She didn’t wait for a reply “It’s much better and has some amazingly meta callbacks to 1980’s cartoons, but I just can’t get over the fact that Donatello is the inventor instead of Leonardo. I mean if you are going to name the characters after such famous painters shouldn’t the history inform who they are in some way?”

“That’s your hang up?”

“Don’t belittle my fandom.”

“Okay” Sam smiled, “Well, it’s not like Donatello never invented anything, he revolutionized the lost wax casting method.”

“But he didn’t invent an armored car, or multi-barreled cannon, or exploding cannon balls.”

“If you switched Donnie and Leo, you’d have to switch Raph and Mikey too. Historically Raphael was by far the most hedonistic of the group, and Michelangelo was the workaholic, muscle head.”

“So you think it’s purposeful inversion?”

“No, I think Leonardo is the leader because he was the most well known artist name. Even more than Michelangelo, which is a harder word for eight year old boys to read.”

“Spoilsport.” Ronnie said with a pout. 

“Jeez, Ronnie,” Dean asked with a smile “just how bored are you?”

A flush of guilt washed over Sam. He should have seen it first.

“You have no idea,” Ronnie said with sigh. 

“I couldn send you more Enochian exercises,” Cas said.

“That would be amazing,” Ronnie said with a smile. “The monograph I could right. I mean the influences on hebrew would be kind of an obvious track, but I think the relationship to greek is fascinating. How absorbent do you think Enochian is Cas? Has it picked up many words in you life time?”

“You’re learning Enochian?” Sam asked.

“It’s easier than Yoruba, and Cas has more patience as a teacher than Louisa.”

“Careful, Ronnie, you’ll make him blush,” Dean said.

Sam stole a glance at Cas and he was looking more bashful than usual. Sam blinked in confusion.

“ _Kah nah om dar sal voch tec, Castiel?_ ”

“ _Vah teh, kah rah, Veronica._ ” Cas nodded his head approvingly as she spoke.

“And so say we all, Amen,” Dean added.

Sam was reeling. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to be learning Enochian?”

“It’s not like I could pass up the opportunity! I may never meet another Angel.”

“God, I hope not,” Sam said.

Dean shot him a worried look. “Sam’s right, Ronnie. Angel’s are kind of dicks.”

“Cas is sitting right there, you realize that right?”

“I agree with Sam and Dean,” Cas said. “I do not enjoy the company of most of my siblings.”

“Do you think I should stop learning Enochian, Cas? Is it going to put me in some kind of danger?”

“No. I think it would be quite useful to have another person available to translate. Then they wouldn’t always have to call me. If I’m going to have children, I will not be as readily available as I have been.”

“Are you pregnant, Cas?” Ronnie asked excited. “Can I throw your baby shower?”

“Slow down Martha Stewart,” Dean interrupted. “How did you know he could get pregnant?”

“Cas can get pregnant?” Sam asked. This conversation had gone sideways fast.

“Well probably not in Jimmy Novak, but Castiel is not the vessel he,” Ronnie paused, pursed her lips, then started over “the essence of Castiel is not solely defined by the vessel Castiel resides in. Do I have that right? Do you identify with male pronouns in all your forms? Because I sound like a Kraang, here trying to avoid pronouns.”

Cas opened his mouth to answer and Sam put his hand on the angel’s shoulder. The touch shifted Cas’s attention and made him pull back what he was going to say. Evan had drifted up to stand behind her mother’s chair. 

“Maybe this isn’t the best time to have this conversation,” Sam said.

Ronnie wrinkled her brow, turned to glance at Evan, and then turned back again with a sigh of exasperation. “Evan and I actually already had the talk about the gender we feel in our brain vs the gender of our bodies. It’s lucky for both of us that they match.”

Evan rolled her eyes. Which made Sam huff with relief. Ronnie glanced back and forth between them.

“Okay, then” Sam said, “while I don’t want to play into heteronormative erasure of non-cisgendered masculinity, I still think we should drop it. If not for Evan then,” he looked across the table, “for Dean’s sake. I’m pretty certain he’s not ready for a crash course in queer theory before he’s eaten his bacon.” Sam hoped that Dean would get the point and back him up. 

“I’m cool,” Dean said. “No, actually, what are hetero-nomicon erasers?”

“Well, I don’t think Dean’s discomfort deserves any privilege,” Ronnie replied testily. “It’s Cas’s right to assert his identity however he views it, fluid, alternating, or consistent. So he should get a chance to answer the question.”

Everyone turned to Cas. 

“I’m sorry,” he said. “What was the question, again? I forgot.”

Evan started giggling. It was a perfectly normal little girl giggle. Sam was actually surprised how normal it was. He suddenly realized he hadn’t heard her laugh at all before. He’d formed some unconscious ideas that her voice, if he ever heard it would be distorted or weirdly infected with supernatural overtones. But she just sounded, like a kid who was laughing. She’d catch a hitch in her breath every now and then and snort. 

Dean’s face light up when he heard it, and he started chuckling, too. “God, that laugh!” He said. “She sounds just like you, Sammy! I used to go all out to get that little piggy grunt.”

“So you could make fun of me in front of your girlfriends!”

“So I could prove how cute you were, and how responsible, yet persecuted, I was. Sob story gold. Nothing will make a teenage girl drop her--”

“Dean!” Sam barked, tilting his head toward the screen, which was at least half filled with Evan’s seven year old face. 

Dean swallowed. “Nothing will show a teenage girl how much you respect her personal boundaries and want to spend time talking and getting to know each other like a solid joke.”

“Evan asks if you could tell a joke that makes Sam snort,” Cas reported.

Everyone looked at him and then at the screen. Evan nodded vigorously.

“Neither her mother or Louisa snort when they laugh,” Cas continued. He leaned toward the screen and lowered his voices. “I don’t think you should tell Louisa you think she sounds like a donkey. I think she would consider that rude.”

Dean chuckled again. “Tell you what squirt. I don’t think I can do it now, because we’ve made him all self-conscious, but I’ll make it happen.” He waived his phone at her, a promise to send her a video. 

Evan squinted and then nodded once in agreement. She waved at the screen, gave it a fake kiss, and then shut the computer. 

The picture on Sam’s end went blank, but the sound was still running. “Hey!” Ronnie said. “You might be done, but I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

“It’s okay,” Sam said. “We’ll call again this evening. Go watch Ninja Turtles.”


	11. Four and Twenty Black Birds Baked in a Pie

Dean struck the head off the vampire in one clean sweep of his machete. “What about comic books?!” he shouted.

Sam cocked his sawed-off and sent a pound of led into the vamp facing him, blowing the monster to the other side of the barn. 

“What?” he yelled back at Dean over the echo.

“Comic books!” Dean announced proudly, looking around for the third missing vamp. “When you were that age you loved comic books. Archie and Superman and the Classics Illustrated and shit.”

“Focus, Dean,” Sam ordered. “This is not the time.” They were facing in different directions, covering opposite sides of the barn and protecting each other’s back.

“I can’t help when epiphany strikes,” Dean said smugly.

“It’s a good idea,” Sam conceded, “better than reading Dora.”

“Awesome,” Dean said with a crooked smile. There was a flickering of shadows and a series of scratching sounds along the eaves. 

“Let’s get some board games, too.” Sam added, glancing at the ceiling and then at Dean, and then at the ceiling again. Dean nodded in agreement and they opened a tiny bit of extra space between them. “And maybe a couple of lego sets?” Sam suggested.

The vampire screamed as it fell from the eaves, kami-kazi style, toward the Winchester brothers. Sam shot it before it landed on top of him.

Dean beheaded the dead thing as he pulled it off of Sam. 

“And Nerf guns,” Dean added excitedly, pulling his blood covered brother to his feet. “I want those.”

# # #

Dean was humming along with the radio, and Sam was flipping through a set of Ms. Marvel and SuperGirl comics. The quiet was gentle. The straight road soothing.

“You know you’re going to be better at this than Dad was,” Dean said to Sam out of the blue. 

Sam looked at him, blinked and then turned back to the comics. 

“That wouldn’t be hard.”

“I mean Dad did his best, but he was alone, and you’ve got me, and Evan’s got Ronnie, so even when we go away and come back, she’s still got a home, and her mom. You don’t have to be everything to her, you can just be her Dad.”

“And that’s doing it better?” Sam asked incredulous.

“We aren’t bringing the monsters and mayhem home with us, instead we’ve got a trunk full of toys. Seems to me that’s doing it better.” 

Sam pursed his mouth considering it. While it wasn’t ever a life he had imagined, it seemed possible. He’d be a drop-in Dad, showing up to spoil Evan on Birthdays and holidays. Take her to baseball games, and keep up with her through phone calls and Skype. They’d be a secret family. Living far away from all the darkness that trailed him and his brother. It fit, at least. He figured that was about as much involvement as Ronnie wanted from him, anyway. 

A sadness crept over him as he thought Evan and Ronnie. He needed to stay away from Evan to keep her safe. He need to share his soul to keep her safe. Ronnie already seemed eager to see less of him. He knew how he'd ended up in this situation. He knew all the steps and choices. But this wasn't what he'd pictured when he'd imagined having a family, a wife and child. Not a wife, he caught himself. A something. He sighed. He felt possessive. He didn't have any right to be possessive. Well maybe of Evan but not Ronnie. No. Not really even of Evan. Before he could spiral anymore, his phone started ringing.

“Ronnie?” Sam answered. “What’s up?”

“Who the hell is Crowley,” she hissed into the phone, “And why are he and Castiel about to go feral on my front lawn?”

“Crowley’s at the house!”

Dean looked at Sam and then punched the Impala and shifted into a higher gear.

“Ronnie, get the shotgun ready. Get yourself and Evan to my room. Check the salt lines but stay inside. Let Cas handle Crowley.”

The Impala shook slightly as it picked up speed. They were more than halfway home, but that was still two hours away. Well two hours driving the speed limit, they’d make it in less.

“Louisa says he’s a demon,” Ronnie hissed. Sam could hear the scrape of chair legs across the floor and he took a steadying breath. She’d hit the can with shotgun. It had knocked her back on her ass, but she had hit the damned can.

“Put your back against a wall if you have to shoot. But they shouldn’t be able to get into the house. Stay away from the windows.”

“They,” she repeated. “They.” He could hear her gritting her teeth. “You mean he _is_ a demon, and that he’s not alone.”

Sam gulped. He tried to stay focused. What did she need to know. What was useful right now. “Cas is stronger. He’s an angle. We’ll be there in an hour or less. They shouldn’t be able to get into the house so you just have to hold out.”

“What if they set the house on fire,” Ronnie asked.

Sam’s heart skipped a beat. That wasn’t going to happen. That couldn’t happen. “Cas won’t let that happen.”

Dean dug out his own cell phone and punched it open next to him. Sam could hear it ringing. “Come on, Come on,” Dean said, but there wasn’t an answer. 

Sam heard the sounds of screams and fighting through the phone. They weren’t as far away as he wanted. “Where are you?” Sam asked. 

“We’re in the kitchen,” Ronnie said. There was the sound of shattering glass, and muffled gunshots.

“Go to my room. Get in the closet. It’s warded and if anything does get into the house, it will give you a little extra time.” 

“You warded the closet?” Dean asked. Sam gave him the stink eye and he looked back at the road.

There was a crash that echoed through the phone, it sounded like it was right on top of his girls. There was a high pitched scream that could only be Evan immediately after. Dean cursed but the car was already moving at its top speed. 

“What’s happening!?!” Sam barked into the phone. Then a shotgun went off. Then it went off again. And again. Sam was holding the phone in front of him. The sound of the shots echoing through the car. He winced at every burst. Dean did, too. There was a gurgling, feminine scream that was cut through with the static sound Sam recognized as angel fire. Then it was silent. Dean looked over and met his eyes. Sam felt like he was looking into a mirror. His brother was worried, and guilty, and scared.

“Ronnie!” He yelled into the phone. “Evan! Louisa! Cas! Anyone please! What’s happening!?!” He couldn’t ask if they were alright. If he asked, then they wouldn’t be.

“Sam!” Ronnie said, breathless. “We’re okay. Cas, he, I don’t know what he did. There was light and an explosion, and we’re fine. We’re all fine.” She grunted uncomfortably. “Damn, that shotgun has more kick than I remember. I think I might have dislocated my shoulder?”

Sam‘s breath came out in short chops. Something unformed between sobs and guffaw. “Okay.” He swallowed. “Okay. Cas can heal--”

“Cas is out. He’s still fighting. Crowley had a spell. Louisa countered, mostly. She’s resetting the wards. We're heading upstairs.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dean muttered. 

“How many got into the house?” Sam said.

“None. They were just standing in the doorway shooting at us, making things move. I slowed them down.”

“That’s good. You did good, Ronnie.”

“Cas should have brought them here,” Dean said. “Popped them right into the car and we could hightailed it to the bunker.”

“That’s what I told him,” said a growly British voice from the back seat. 

Dean slammed on the breaks and the Impala skidded out in a fishtail before coming to a stop. 

“In case you’re wondering,” Crowley continued, “it was Castiel that started it. My only interest was reconnaissance. But once he started killing my spies, well, it’s hard enough to keep demons in line when they don’t feel threatened.”

“Crowley,” Sam growled. His right hand started moving slowly toward the angel blade in his coat. His eyes never left the demon.

“He went over the top,” Crowley said “Overcompensating for past failures. As always. Which reminds me. Congratulations, Sam! The little one’s really got your eyes. I’ll have my people send you a fruit basket.” 

Crowley winked out just as Sam lunged. The blade tore the leather on the backseat, but didn’t touch the demon. Dean didn’t blink or say anything about the damage to the car. 

Crowley tapped on the driver’s side window. Dean grimaced and checked with Sam, who nodded slightly. Dean rolled the window down.

“I’m not what you should be worried about,” Crowley said.

“Right. Just like you weren’t a threat to Lisa and Ben,” Dean spat.

“That was years ago, Dean. Apocalypse under the bridge. As a gesture of goodwill I’ll pull back all the minions I’ve had watching over Sam’s spawn and baby mamma.”

“You mean Cas has killed them all already,” Sam said, barely holding onto his cool.

“He certainly made a dent,” Crowley conceded, “but I’m the King of Hell, if I wanted more cannon fodder on site. I wouldn’t have any trouble getting it.”

“That a threat?” Dean asked. 

“I’d never threaten the Winchesters. I’m just thinking it might be time to examine the dynamics of our working relationship. Think about it boys,” Crowley said, giving the car a happy thump, and disappearing with a smile. 

“Fuck,” Dean said. “So much for not bringing the monsters home with us.”

“We could summon him and kill him in half an hour.”

“Which throws hell into a power struggle. Remember how that went last time?”

“Are you taking Crowley’s side?”

“Of course not! But the devil we know is, probably, better than the devil we don’t.”

Sam gulped. He gave Dean a pleading look. 

“No. No! We’ve already talked about why that is a bad idea,” Dean said.

“Do you have any others? Once we’ve fixed Evan, wouldn’t it be better if they never knew we existed. Why shouldn’t Cas just wipe us out of their heads?”

Dean looked out the windshield, and set his jaw. “I would have moved heaven or hell for Ben, even when he didn’t remember me. I depended on Crowley not understanding that. But he won’t fall for it twice.” He looked over and locked eyes with Sam. “Seriously. Would it matter to you? Now that you know that Evan is your little girl, would it matter if they didn’t know who you were? Or even if they hated you?”

Sam slumped in his seat. “No.” 

“So we find another way, which means we need time, and for now that means finding out what Crowley wants.”

“Okay.” 

There was click from Sam’s cell phone. He looked down at it on the seat between him and Dean. He’d forgotten it was on. Hell. Ronnie had heard all of that. 

Sam looked at Dean horrified and Dean grimaced back at him. The impala’s engine turned over with a steady rumble.


	12. Deep Fried Peach Pie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Cas,” Ronnie asked tentatively, after taking a sip of her beer and checking her sandwich for any unpleasant surprises. “Why are are Sam and Dean acting weird?”

The cabin was a mess when they pulled up. 

Louisa cornered them as soon as they got out of the car. 

“Castiel will tell you he’s fine but he’s not.”

Cas appeared beside her. “I’m fine.” 

He looked like shit and staggered into Dean. 

“Okay, buddy,” Dean said holding him up and patting at his back. “Let’s get you inside and settled somewhere.” They started lurching toward the porch. 

Louisa glared at Sam. “I reset Ronnie’s shoulder and put her to bed. Evan has a concussion. I expect you to stay up and watch her tonight.” 

“Of course. Absolutely.”

Louisa winked out and Sam jogged into the house. Cas was deep into the couch, with Dean fussing over him and Louisa watching both of them with a sour expression.

“I know you don’t sleep,” Dean said, “but meditate or some shit. Please, we might need you firing on all cylinders if any more demons show up.”

“Crowley will not be returning,” Castiel said with a wave of his hand. “Not until he’s figured out what he wants.”

“Oh, well, that makes me feel so much better,” Dean replied, rolling his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Cas said. “I let the girls get hurt.”

Louisa cursed, loudly. “Winchesters. I need a word with you. Now.” Sam and Dean looked at each other warily, neither moved.

Louisa narrowed her eyes and snapped her fingers. Suddenly they were in a room that was like one of the cabin’s rooms, but wasn’t actually any of the rooms in the cabin. It had the same wood floors and the bad wallpaper, but there weren’t any doors and the window, was the same window, with the same frosted white glass.

She was pacing. Sam and Dean looked at each other again and pushed their backs up against the wall. 

“Shouldn’t I go watch Evan?” Sam asked.

“Don’t worry this won’t take long.” She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at them. “Boys, boys, boys . . . I’m not sure where to begin.” She stopped and pursed her lips. “Your grandmother Millie, was one of the best women I have ever known.” 

Both the boys raise their eyebrows and glance at each other. They had never met a grandmother Millie.

“I told her that Henry Winchester was bad news. I did. He was just like you Sam, always drawn to broken birds. I tried to convince her that passing wasn’t worth it. That she’d end up trapped at home with a baby, while he fell in love with tragedy. And was I wrong?!” Louisa waited for the boys to answer, but they just looked at her blankly. “No, I was not!” she supplied in frustration. 

Dean cleared his throat. “Henry saved our lives,” he started. 

“Yes,” Louisa encouraged him. “Go on and tell me about Henry’s tender relationship with Abbadon. We can compare and contrast it with Sam and Ruby, and then do an intersectional examination of you and Crowley. I am a master in the subject of Winchester stupidity. I got a whole syllabus of examples, and a damned Ph.D in unpleasant parallels. Don’t try me boy, I will school you.” 

Dean glanced at Sam who's eyes were wide with a combination of shock and terror. This was not going well.

“Sorry for interrupting Ma’am,” Dean apologized. Louisa nodded accepting the apology. She went back to pacing..

“Listen to me carefully,” she said at last. “You will do right by my girls. I know that if you think really hard and work at it, you will come up with a way to keep them safe. But I want more than that. You two are going to figure out how to make them happy. Do you understand me?”

They both nodded yes.

“Good,” Louisa snapped and then she stretched, becoming two Louisas, tied by a spectrum of light, mirror images of the dark-skinned woman leaning over the Winchester brothers. “Because I am only going to give you this warning once,” she enunciated, her voice twined and echoing before she delivered each boy a private message.

She leaned back, judging their reactions. Satisfied, she snapped again. Dean landed on the couch next to Cas. Sam found himself in a chair next to Evan's bed, holding Scooby-Doo.

# # #

“I just think you’ve got it wrong Cas,” Ronnie argued, leaning off the couch to grab a handful of chips. “Free will means that God abdicated the ruling of us, to us. Free will wouldn't mean anything if came with training wheels. If the danger is all simulated then we are babies in a crib, or animals in a zoo, or Adam and Eve still locked in a garden." She popped a chip in her mouth. “This can’t be new to you.” She tucked her feet up and in.

Cas looked thoughtful, he had his feet on top of the coffee table. "You are referring to the argument that God’s always intended for humans to leave Eden.”

"Sure, if you want to simplify it." 

“God should still be involved." Cas countered. "Maimonides clearly stated that there was a reward for good and a punishment for evil. Free will is rendered illusory when account you for impact of omnipotence and omniscience. And you are eating all of the chips,” he pouted tipping the bowl on the coffee table to peer inside.

“Too bad, slowpoke,” Ronnie grinned at him. “Beside since when has any understanding of God been logical? If I learned anything before I dumped my dissertation, it was that theology and theosophy were the same damned thing.” 

“My understanding of God was very logical before the apocalypse,” Castiel stated flatly.

“Right, and how did that work out for you?” Ronnie wondered with a raised eyebrow. After he’d spent an uncomfortable pause in serious contemplation, Ronnie pushed at Cas with a socked toe.

“It was a rhetorical question, I don’t expect a full debriefing,” she said with a smile. “But, fyi, my arguments are entirely logical if you take a mathematical position on omniscience. The entire now is knowable, but that the future doesn’t exist, and therefore cannot be known, just modeled based on current trends.”

“You think God is a statistician.” 

“I think maybe she’s a gambler who knows the odds and the stakes better than anyone else.” 

Dean wandered over tapped Cas’s legs with his knees, making him move them from the coffee table. Dean set down a beer and a sandwich in front of Ronnie, then pulled a new bag of chips out from under his arm. He tipped the bag into the empty bowl. Finally with a wink at Cas and grand gesture he pulled two Hubig's Deep Fried Peach and Honey Pies. He handed one to Ronnie and one to Cas.

“Enjoy,” he said, proudly. Then walked back to the kitchen. 

Veronica’s brow furrowed and she followed his moves suspiciously. The cabin was small and there weren’t really walls downstairs. So when she turned around and looked behind her she could see Evan playing solitaire on Sam’s computer at the dining table, and Sam doing dishes in the kitchen beyond. Dean seemed intent on sandwiches. There was no Metallica or Blue Oyster Cult blaring. She had been having a esoteric conversation with Cas for over an hour and no-one had interrupted or made a crude joke.

Cas took a chip and chewed it thoughtfully. “You’re proposing a variation on the clock-maker theory. One that incorporates the constant flux of chance. Not a clock, but a roulette wheel. We can play against the house, but the house always wins over time.”

“Cas,” Ronnie asked tentatively, “why are are Sam and Dean acting weird?” She sniffed at her beer and checked her sandwich for any unpleasant surprises. 

“Louisa talked with them last night, and I think they are feeling guilty,” Castiel grumbled. There might have been a hint of amusement in his voice. 

“Oh,” Ronnie said, nodding with understanding.

“I think she likes them,” Castiel added. 

“I know she does,” Ronnie agreed. She was sure both the Winchesters were listening. “That probably made it worse. There's nothing like disappointing an Ori that’s been pulling for you. When I piss her off she doesn’t have seven generations of my family’s sins at her fingertips. Plus, I know what she likes. The right offering and that woman just melts like butter.” She took a long pull on her beer. “Cas, I think I’m gonna go eat this sandwich outside. I gotta go contemplate the nature of omniscience.”

She stood up and saluted Cas with her drink.

"Oohh" Cas said, shaking a finger at her. "I see what you're doing." 

She winked at him. Then picked up her plate and carried it toward the porch.

“Aw, come on,” Dean called from the kitchen, as she pushed through the screen door. “You can’t leave me hanging like that! Tell me how to get out of trouble.”

Sam snorted, a smile flashing over his face.

“You’re in trouble, too!” Dean said pointing a finger at his brother. “Don’t laugh this off.”

“I’ve been kind of enjoying the conversation, actually,” Sam said, with a happy shrug. “It’s more interesting than albums I’ve heard a dozen times.” 

“I was enjoying it, too,” Cas said from the couch. “Veronica is quite stimulating to talk to.”

Dean glared at Cas. Cas looked away, abashed. Dean’s phone started ringing.

“So that’s what it’s going to be like,” Dean bounced his glare from Sam to Cas and back again as he fished his phone out of his pocket. “Don’t think I won’t remember this betrayal,” he murmured sliding his right thumb across the phone and wiping his hand on his jeans. 

“This is Dean,” he barked. “Who are you and how’d you get this number?”

“Squirrel,” cooed Crowley, “always good to talk to you, too. I never knew you were such a culinary wonder. Why haven’t you ever made me a sandwich? I’m hurt. I am. Really.”


	13. Easy As Pie.

Crowley showed the phone to Ronnie as he hung up. “There. All done. Just like I said. We have three hours until they get here. So let’s chat. I’m worried about you.”

Ronnie was gagged and tied to chair. She glared at him.

“I know I violated the rules, don't call back for two days after the first date. But this just can't wait. Have the brothers told you that all of Sam’s exes are dead? Well almost all. There are a few one night stands here and there, the hippie girl, she’s still around. The dog lady. You. But mostly, no. All dead. I killed several myself. Bad luck right? Especially since Dean’s girls are all alive, you'd think some of them would have been fridged along the way, too. Dramatic tension and all that. Nope. They’re fine. His boys on the other hand? Well, probably best we don't get into that.”

Crowley stuck his hands into his suit pockets and spun lightly on his heel, slowly stalking the chair where Ronnie was bound. 

“I noticed ages ago,” he continued, “but it wasn’t my problem. I like having the boys on the road seeding chaos and destruction. But now, if fate takes its normal course, when you die, then Sam and Dean are suddenly home-bound with a baby, leading a milk and apple pie life. Dull.”

Crowley leaned in close to Ronnie’s face. He wiped a bit of spittle off her chin.

“I can tell you don’t think I care. But I do. You are the finest piece of leverage that I’ve had in a long, long time. I can’t have anything hurting you,” Crowley smiled, “but me.”

He was smugly pleased with himself. “I did some digging. Your Ori has been holding out on you. Millie Winchester, she really knew how to hold a grudge. I had a chat with her, because she's in hell, and after some persuasion, she drew up this.” Crowley unrolled a scroll. “Nasty bit of work. A little Yoruba. A little Santeria. A little Mayan. She put this curse on her own son, and all his descendants. I'm thinking of promoting her. Would you like to have a look at it?” He said, laying the scroll down on a desk. “I think I'll just leave it here. With these other books. That look useful.”

Crowley, proud of his own cleverness, walked toward the door.

“Oops,” he said. “Can’t go out that way. Cas is already waiting. He can’t come in, though. You’d have to walk out to him. Course if you do that, the scroll will disintegrate, and no one will have read it.” 

“Remember, 3 hours, love. Oh, and when you need it, I’ve taken the liberty of putting my personal number in your phone.”

Crowley snapped his fingers and disappeared, Ronnie’s chains did too. She got up, shaking, and headed out to Cas. She had every intention of leaving. Crowley was a demon and demons lie. The door swung open at her touch, but she stopped at the base of the stairs, her eyes drawn to the books. And the scroll.

Ronnie cursed under her breath. The she walked over to the desk and picked up the scroll gingerly, like it was a scorpion. She knew enough Spanish to make her eyes go wide. Within a heartbeat, she'd started studying. She knew she had to memorize every word.

# # #

Sam and Dean burst in two and a half hours later. Ronnie was sitting in the corner holding her knees and rocking. Sam scooped her up and carried her out to the car. 

He held her in the backseat the whole ride home murmuring softly, about how cold she was. He kept talking about hypothermic shock.

Dean yelled at Cas for saying she was physically fine. She was obviously not fine. She was damned near catatonic. 

It all seemed to happen far away. 

None of them noticed the parchment still clutched in her fist.

# # #

When they got to the house Louisa was holding a teary eyed Evan. “Thank God you’re alright!” she said in her creole accent. 

Ronnie said nothing. Her face a mask. She took the child out of Louisa’s arms and pressed the parchment into her hands.

Louisa looked confused, then unrolled it and went ashen.

Veronica watched coldly. “You protect girls? Really? Did you help her with this? When were you going to tell me?” Her voice was soft and deadly sharp.

“I did not do this with her,” Louisa swore, terror in her eyes.

Ronnie’s mouth twisted in anger. “But you taught her. You taught her the same way you taught me and you knew!” Ronnie was yelling now. “You’ve always known! And you didn’t tell me!”

Dean stepped forward. “What’s going on here?”

The women ignored him.

“The girl needed his aura!” Louisa shot back. “We couldn’t have held off the Gibborim on our own.”

“So you traded one death sentence for another!?” Ronnie clutched Evan.

Sam was getting slightly panicked. “I think one of you really needs to stop, and explain what’s going on.”

Ronnie looked at him, and at Dean. “You are cursed. Both of you.”

“It’s not a curse, it’s a guise,” Louisa corrected. “You behave: it behaves.” 

“It was a guise,” Ronnie argued. “Maybe. But it’s not anymore. Look at it!”

Louisa waved her off. “This is impossible, _mon cherie!_ For anything I taught Millie to turn into this” she made a sweeping gesture toward the Winchesters, “The amount of power needed to change the nature of the spell, it’s cosmic, it’s not possible.”

“I. Gave. You. The. Damned. Books.” Ronnie said biting off the words. 

“I don’t need to read that trash,” Louisa replied. 

“May I see the spell,” Cas asked. 

“Didn’t you wonder why they had an angel on call!?” Ronnie continued furious.

“No,” Louisa handed Cas the parchment, “you have me on call.” 

"What about that whole seven generations of sins crap? A master's degree in the subject of Winchester stupidity."

"I keep track of sins against women with blood of the Yoruba tribes, not the sins against some Grecko-Roman god variant that's popular in western culture!" Louisa huffed throwing her hands up in anger, and then rubbed at her forehead. "But none of that would have, mattered because it would have had to have been John. Changes like this would have had to start with John." Louisa snatched the paper back from Cas and started mumbling angrily at it. She flickered in and out of reality with the intensity of her thoughts.

Ronnie deflated. She sat down on the couch still clutching Evan. She wiped tears out of the girls eyes and kissed her forehead. They stared deeply into each other’s eyes. Until Ronnie nodded with what seemed like understanding and Evan threw her arms around her mother and squeezed tight.

Dean turned to Cas. “Please tell me you know what’s going on.” 

Cas cleared his throat. “It seems that your grandmother, Millie Winchester, was not pleased when your grandfather Henry disappeared. She was worried that John would be the same type of man, so she cast a guise on his bloodline.”

“A guise?” Dean asked.

“A triggered curse.” Sam explained. “You have to do something specific to trigger it. Like opening the mummy's tomb or bopping Little Bunny Fu-Fu on the head.”

“Terrible example,” Dean said.

“Yes,” agreed Cas, “but accurate. Little Bunny Fu-Fu was given three warnings to stop his behavior and was cursed when he failed to heed the rules. That is how a guise works.”

“We’re all going to be turned into goons?” Dean asked.

“This has nothing to do with field mice, Dean,” Cas continued. “It’s a fidelity guise.”

“Exactly!” Louisa interjected. “The Winchester men will always receive pain in love equal to the pain they cause. As long as you do right by your women, there is no harm. It is very fair.” 

“That does appear to have been the original intent of the guise,” Cas concurred. “But the balance has been thrown off, because, well, your psychic pain tolerances are no longer within the range of normal human experience.”

“We’ve blown the bell curve,” Sam offered. 

“More like the spell no longer recognizes either one of you as human anymore. It over corrects in a violent way trying to prevent corruption.”

“What does that mean?” Dean asked.

Cas hesitated, so Ronnie answered from the couch instead. “It means that the more you love someone, the more likely they are to die a horrible death.”

“That can’t be right,” Dean looked Castiel right in the eye.

“It is slightly more complex than that,” Cas responded.

“Slightly!” Sam yelped.

“But she does have the general meaning of it,” Cas finished. 

“How do we get rid of it?” Dean demanded.

“I don’t know. Yet,” Cas replied. “But it is still a fidelity guise. It’s not triggered unless you leave the people you love.”

“It’s not triggered,” Ronnie said slowly, “unless you leave the people who love you.”

“That is another possible translation,” Castiel conceded. 

“I vote for the girl’s reading,” Louisa said. 

“They could both be true at once,” Cas proposed. “Then the worst situations would result when both parties loved the other."

"Very Romeo and Juliet," Louisa added. 

"This is going to require some investigation,” Cas said, and with a swoop of his wings, he was gone.


	14. A Finger in Every Pie

Sam and Dean were arguing. It was the middle of the night and they were talking in hushed voices behind Sam’s closed door. They had been for a while. Ronnie peeked through a crack, hoping to go unnoticed. 

“Dude, this means none of it was your fault,” Dean asserted. He was leaning against the wall while Sam sat on the bed. 

“They died because they loved me, how is that not my fault?” Sam asked.

“You can’t help being lovable. Besides the way Cas explained it, the guise didn’t get twisted until after demons and angels got involved with lives.”

“Demon’s got involved in my life when I was six months old.” 

“No. Nope. This guise or whatever is now a forbidden topic. I can't have you getting your head twisted, Sammy. Besides, I’ve got the curse too, right. Why aren’t the women who loved me dead?” Dean held his arms out in a questioning gesture.

"Lisa doesn’t love you anymore cause she doesn’t remember you, and, as for the rest, well, they weren’t the deepest connections were they?”

“Shut up.” Dean started pacing.

Sam sighed, and rubbed his face with his hands. “What are we gonna do about Ronnie. What if she...” Sam bit his lip and his sentence trailed off, floating unfinished in the air. 

“Spit it out Sam. What about Ronnie?” 

“I broke her heart once, Dean. She told you so herself,” Sam stalled, hesitating, “But she survived.”

“So?” 

“So, what does that mean? And what now? Cas thinks she still had feelings for me,” Sam swallowed, “am I, like, _de facto_ married to this girl now, because if I’m somehow unfaithful to her, it’s going to kill her?”

“Dude,” Den shook his head as Ronnie pushed the door open.

Sam saw her first. He jumped to his feet, interrupting whatever counter argument Dean was working on.

“Ronnie,” Sam said smiling awkwardly and rubbing his hands on his jeans. “We were just--” he smiled tightly, “So how much of that did you hear?”

“Enough,” she said, looking at Sam cold and blank.

“Look,” Dean interrupted “I was just about to tell Sam, that you're family now. No one’s going to abandon anyone." Dean attempted a charming smile. "So all of this guise stuff is moot.” 

Ronnie raised an eyebrow at Dean, and then glanced back over her shoulder at Sam. Sam flinched slightly and didn't meet her eyes. Pursing her lips briefly Veronica walked over to Dean. She straightened her spine, taking an extra step into his space. One more step than was needed. 

“I’m not worried about being abandoned,” she said, placing a hand on Dean's chest. Dean glanced up at Sam and took a step backward. Right into the wall. "See," Ronnie said, bringing her free hand up to Dean’s cheek, "No one owes me a debt of faithfulness." She glanced back over her shoulder at Sam, "and I don’t owe fidelity to anybody either." She looked back up at Dean, and ran a thumb along the scruff of his jaw line. "But, if you ever wanna indulge that mommy complex of yours” she paused, smiled naughtily, took the last step toward him, and pulled Dean gently down into a kiss. His eyes went wide and he looked over her cheek to Sam. Sam, who was glowering. Dean held his hands up so that Sam could see he wasn’t using them. Ronnie, meanwhile pressed her body into Dean's, and standing on her tip-toes for better leverage.

Sam’s nostrils flared. He turned his face away and cleared his throat. Loudly. Ronnie finally pulled back, leaving Dean slightly fish mouthed. 

“Remember,” she said to the older Winchester, giving him a smile and a wink, “I’m cool.”

Dean smiled wolfishly. It was second nature, mostly reflex. Ronnie smiled back and then turned to Sam. She planted her feet, and waited for him to look at her. He still didn't meet her eyes. He just glanced past her, his shoulder tense. Ronnie took a step toward him, into that space on the floor that he was staring at.

“Right, Shaggy?” she said. “Haven’t I always been cool? You don’t have to worry about me tying you down, or anything else. That’s just not what I do.” 

He met her eyes at last. Sam stared back at her without saying anything. His jaw moved slightly, but nothing came out. Veronica turned away and left the room.

“Well,” Dean said, jocular and smiling. “That’s good right? Ronnie doesn’t seem to broken up about you, so you’re still a free man! No baby mamma drama for you, bro!” He gave Sam a good whump on the arm, full of camaraderie. 

“Get the hell out of my room, Dean.” 

"It's our room," Dean replied.

"Not tonight," Sam said pulling up to his full height. 

Dean rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said grabbing a pillow and blanket from his bed. He walked out into the hallway, but paused at the top of the stairs. There was a light under Sam's closed door, and one under Ronnie's closed door. Evan's doorway was dark and open and she was standing just outside the frame, hand on the edge. "Sorry if we woke you up kid."

Evan shrugged. She turned sideways and nodded her head toward her room. It took Dean a moment of furrowed brow to understand she was making an offer.

"Naw, I'm good on the couch," he said. 

She shrugged again. Then walked out into the hallway. She wasn't really headed toward Dean, but she paused as she passed him and gave him a comforting pat on the elbow. It was weird. Then she pushed her mom's door open. Just before she slipped inside she looked back over her shoulder and winked at Dean. A few seconds later the light was out in the Ronnie's room. 

"Oh," Dean mumbled to himself, "well in that case..." Then he went to lie down in Evan's twin bed. It wasn't any smaller than the one he'd been sleeping on, and it was better than the couch.

# # # 

“Idiots!” Louisa howled. Sweeping through the house and flickering in and out of the physical plane. 

Sam pulled the cover's off of Dean, scattering random stuffed animals. “Get up. The girls are gone!”

“What?!” Dean woke up stiff. Still fully dressed. He stumbled after Sam, who was racing down the stairs two at a time. “Like taken gone?” Dean hollered.

“I don’t know,” Sam shouted in reply, stuffing books into his duffel. “There’s a note. Its more ‘we're-leave-you-before-you-leave-us’ gone.”

“Son of a bitch!” Dean cursed, grabbing his coat and keys; then he remembered to stuff his feet into shoes.

“They took the car, Dean!” 

“Baby?” 

“Idiots!!!” Louisa wailed again.

Dean did know if she was angry with them or with Ronnie and Evan. 

# # #

They found Baby parked one town over. She was was neatly settled on a residential street, about a block and a half from a used car lot.

The used car salesman remembered a woman with a kid, who fit the right description. He said they’d bought a camper ready Winnebago, and he was happy to turn over the license and registration for a $50 dollar bribe. 

Sam and Dean were negotiating possible routes as they climbed into the Impala. That's when Dean started to get a funny feeling.

“This ain’t right,” Dean said settling into the driver’s seat. 

“What?” Sam asked.

“Does your seat feel funny?” 

“No.” 

“Yeah, mine doesn’t either. And that’s wrong. Ronnie’s what, six, seven, inches shorter than I am. She would have moved the seat to drive and even if she’d tried to put it back in the right place, it wouldn’t be perfect.”

Sam twisted around to look at the back seat. “No booster indents,” he said, confirming Dean’s suspicion. 

They both scrambled out of the car and started charging toward the used car lot. The salesman smoked out, roaring off into the sky before the Winchester brothers could touch him.

# # #

“Crowley, what have you done with my family?” Sam prowled the edge of the devil's trap, angel blade in hand.

“Nothing Moose. I just helped them get a little head start.”

“What deal did you make?” Dean growled.

“Moi?’ Crowley touched his hand to his lapel, “Take advantage of the lovely Veronica? She’s got nothing I want. You two on the other hand, you are useful. There’s a certain, fraction of rebellious nobles that need to be reminded exactly why I am king of hell. I’m going to tell you where they are congregating and you, with the Angel on your shoulder, are going to go smite them all. In return, I’ll turn on the lojack and you can find your runaway girls.”

“What’s the catch, Crowley?” Sam asked.

“Catch? I’ve got all the power of heaven by the short and curlies, and everyone is going to know it. Why would I need anything else?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Sam said.

“Moose this flirtation... I know you're jealous of what I have with your brother. But it’s not really his fault. It’s you. Everyone picks him instead of you because you are an insufferable, self-righteous, martyr! You’ve got no follow through, Sam. I mean if ever anyone ever had a perfect set-up," Crowly sighed, stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at Sam condescendingly. "But it wouldn't have worked out. She’s not broken enough. Not nearly as broken as you." Crowley leaned back and puffing out his chest. “In my humble opinion, Ronnie running away is the clearest sign there could be that she was too smart and sane for either of you.”

“Tell us where the girls are.” Sam's jaw was clenched.

“Not. Until. You. Do. What. I. Say.” Crowley turned calmly to Dean. “Has your brother stopped understanding English, Squirrel?”

“Crowley, if you don’t tell us where they are I am going to kill you myself,” Dean replied 

Crowley cocked an eyebrow. “Huh.” He gave Dean a wicked grin. “Well done mate! Did you sleep with her before or after you realized your brother was smitten?”

Dean glanced up at Sam who was shaking with rage.

“I’m going to get the chair and the cuffs,” Dean said, “and then I am going to leave you alone with Sam. I don’t think you realize how patient he can be.” 

“Kinky,” Crowley replied, “I like it. You going to turn me into hamburger, Sam? Take it nice and slow?”

“I don’t think I’d notice the time passing,” Sam replied.

“Well that ought to be fun, cause the girls have only got seven hours," Crowley checked his watch. "No, sorry, how long have we been here? Make that 4. I’ll admit that I’m not as young and limber as I used to be. But I can last four hours.” 

Sam’s face went deathly still and blank.

“You said you didn’t do anything to them!” Dean screamed.

“I didn’t. They're the ones that took off in a unwarded car. I didn't change a thing about it. I might be wrong in how long those little hex bags are going to last," Crowley smiled, "but we all know that I’m not.” The demon looked from one Winchester to the other smugly. “Face it boys, the only way this plays out in time for you to sweep in and rescue the princess is to do what I want you to do. Now, shall I write down the addresses or do you think you can remember it?” 

“It’s done,” Cas said appearing at the edge of the room. 

Crowley made a surprised expression. “Feeling efficient today, Castiel?"

“Tell them where the girls are,” Cas ordered.

“Of course, may I ask why are you so interested?”

Castiel crossed into the Devil’s trap and lifted up Crowley by his throat. 

“Veronica had very interesting ideas about clocks and roulette wheels. We were friends. She just asked me to be Evan’s Godfather, and I haven’t gotten to say yes. Yet.” He dropped Crowley to the floor. “Now stop stalling.”


	15. Pie in the Sky

The motel where Evan and Ronnie were holed up was crawling with Gibborim. At least Cas said it was. The things were barely visible to human eyes. They found Ronnie’s room by following the chalked symbols that were etched along the railings and eaves. 

There was a dispute about whether Ronnie was going to let them in or call the cops, so Sam kicked in the door, breaking the cheap motel lock and chain, before asking if she would, maybe, like to talk to him, in private, while Dean and Cas watched Evan.

“What the hell were you thinking!” Sam bellowed as soon as they’d marched downstairs and turned a corner in the parking lot. Ronnie was still on the bottom step of the concrete stairwell.

“Excuse me?!” she replied indignant.

“How could you trust Crowley?” Sam asked fuming.

“I didn’t,” Ronnie replied coldly.

“You took his car!?!” Sam yelled.

“Fuck that!” Ronnie yelled right back. “We walked to the bus stop and then picked up my mom’s old car from the storage center it’s been at ever since I set up the cabin. Check yourself, Winchester. You're the one who trusts demons.” It was a low blow, but Sam wasn’t exactly acting with largess.

“Where did you think you were going?!” Sam asked, still enraged, even though he didn’t know where to put the emotion. “Did you think you could out run the Gibborim on your own?”

“None of your business,” Ronnie answered, pissed herself.

Sam knew how to use his height as an advantage and he pushed it now, invading her space and looming over her. “Evan is my daughter, and wherever you take her is my business.” His voices was low and angry. He had a hand on either side of the stairwell exit blocking Ronnie into the narrow space. 

Ronnie took several deep breaths and watched the muscles in Sam’s face twitch, fighting the urge to step backward and away from him. After counting to 20 in her head, she slowly lifted her hand and pushed him away from the exit and out of her way. Sam let himself be pushed. Though his breathing was still ragged and uneven.

She walked past him out of the stairwell and into the open air of the parking lot. She looked up and scanned the area tracking the light of the her room. The cheap asphalt scuffing into gravel underneath her boots.

“So, Dean already grabbed her, then?” Ronnie asked her voice lilting with bitter humor that bordered on hysteria. “What are you going to do leave her with Jodi? You think that will help? Make her feel less abandoned?”

“What are you talking about?” Sam asked, confused, insulted, suspicious, and other unsettled unfocused emotions.

“You wanna know my plan Sam? I wanna know yours!” Ronnie’s body was quivering and hot angry tears were streaming down her face. “Cause I’ve just spent the summer trying to convince my daughter to trust you and love you, cause I thought that would help protect her, but nope sorry, that’s all false, because when we do get to the point that Evan would share her fucking soul with you, then boom, brand new death curse!”

“It’s not like that Ronnie,” Sam argued, his voice still low with passion and heat.

“It’s exactly like that Sam!” Ronnie asserted. 

“I would never abandon my daughter,” Sam insisted.

“You already fucking have!!” She howled. 

Sam’s silence was uncomfortable. No tension left his body. His eyes were still narrowed and his nostrils flared. His hands balled and released while his shoulders quivered with tension that didn’t have an outlet. 

Ronnie wiped her eyes. “You are so…” she searched for the word, “You are so, goddamned, vain.”

“Carly Simon’s the best insult you’ve got?” Sam taunted. It sounded meaner than he meant it too.

“I heard you and Dean,” Ronnie explained, “talking about that damned curse as if it was all about your love lives, as if the only women that exist are the ones you fuck. I’m standing out there in the hallway expecting you to be worried the way I’m worried. Because, it sucks, but I’m okay living in the woods for the next ten years if that’s what it takes for Evan to grow her own Angel immunities or whatever. I was down with playing house and pretending to be family, before. But I figured we’d all be on the same page about how that was over now. It’s one thing to break her heart if she has time to heal from it and another altogether if, god, if…” Ronnie started crying again and couldn’t catch her breath to finish her sentence.

Sam walked over and hugged her. He didn’t say anything. After a minute of ugly sobbing Ronnie wrapped her arms around him too. Sam closed his eyes and the anger drained from his body. 

“We’ll work it out,” Sam said rubbing her back. “We’ve lifted our fair share of curses in the past. Until then, we’ll make sure she doesn’t feel abandoned”

“Do you know what that means, Sam?” she mumbled into his shirt. “This summer has been a weird extended vacation, but it's not real. It’s not getting up everyday to get to school, and doing homework, and fighting about bedtimes, and making budgets and paying bills, and it's gotta end. I don’t see you or your brother in that life,” Ronnie leaned back and looked up at him. “I don’t see how we fit with your life either. My savings are gone, Sam. I have to get a job. Evan is supposed to start first grade.”

Sam never responded because all of the lights exploded. Instinctively, Sam used his body to shield Ronnie from the rain of shattered glass that cascaded around them. 

“Are you okay?” Sam asked Ronnie, shaking the glass off his leather coat. 

“Evan!” she said. Looking toward the room. Sam nodded and took off in his loping gait. 

“Dean!” he yelled, climbing the stairs four at a time, and pulling the Angel blade from inside his coat, “What’s going on!”

The shadows writhed away from the metal of the blade; the darkness broken and inverted in odd ways, like light around an indoor pool. The twilight was smudged and spotted. Sam pushed through it, but it resisted him. Grabbed and clawed and pulled him back. Thoughts about walking into a hurricane flitted through Sam’s head. 

He hacked with the blade, swinging at everything and nothing. For a while it worked, the space opened up in front of him. But whatever the Gibborim were, they seemed agile. Sam made less and less progress slicing wildly at the air.

He closed his eyes and felt them. Bundles of weight, clambering over him. The grabbing of their hands and pushing of their feet felt Chimpanzee like, and he was the tree they were trying to bring down. He felt a sharp pain on his ear and knew that he had been bitten. 

He tried to grab one and toss it away, but his hand just passed through the air. He could feel where the mist and darkness got thick and dense but he couldn’t grab it. Another sharp pain ripped across his cheek and he started to feel his eye socket swell. He swept the blade over his head and the air there cleared, but just as quickly as the load on his shoulder lightened he felt a new bit on his calf, just below the knee.

The room was just at the end of the walkway, but he wasn’t getting any closer.

Suddenly the mist screamed and the weight of it lifted as Sam was covered in a sooty dust that smelled like burnt cinnamon. He looked up and saw Ronnie smudged with the red brown powder. 

“This won’t stop them forever,” she said and thrust the bag at him. 

“What is it?” Sam asked.

“Stuff they don’t like to touch, okay?” Ronnie replied, annoyed. “Now go.”

Sam went.


	16. Mud Pies, Dried and Crumbled

Dark misty shadows were congealed in a wall around where the motel beds. They pulsed and gurgled, and spurts of bright white light pimpled and popped out of the oily surface before it resealed. 

Sam tested the grip on his Angel blade and bag of Ronnie’s hex dust as he approached the wall. He slid the blade into the surface and pulled firmly down. With a howl it pulled apart, and a long slit opened up. Inside he saw Dean and Cas holding the darkness at bay, while stood on the bed holding her nerf gun. Sam quickly noted that the floor had been marked with the Ronnie’s hex powder, and that the defense seemed to be concentrated around the beds.

He pushed forward and the membrane of gibborim pulled away from him, but barely. The residue felt like hot breath on skin, but he pushed through anyway. 

Sam stepped right up to Evan and lifted her up into his arms. She shot a foam dart at the ceiling and Sam realized that it was swirling with the shadowed gibborim as well. The gun was smeared with the Sam red brown powder Ronnie had hit him with and the ceiling was dotted with red brown spots. The gibborim avoided them, leaving a spider web of clear space above them. 

“Sam,” Dean barked, watching a tendril of mist try and push its way into the cleared area. “You think you can get her out of here?”

“It’s not worth it,” Cast countered. “These Gibborim have swarmed like locusts.” He stuck both hands into the wall and there was a snarling sound as the a hunk of mist evaporated into white light. “They have lost all reasons and caution. I don't think we can out run them.”

“can' t you mojo us out of the way?” Dean asked never talking his eyes of the black mist on his side of the circle. 

“I can't carry, you and Sam and Evan and Ronnie. Also, I don’t seem to be able to smite them fast enough to make a difference," Castiel explained. "There is a possibility that if we removed the energy triggering them they would return to their harmless state." 

“Cas considering the bite on my side you’ve got a twisted idea of harmless,” Dean replied

“Mostly harmless,” Castiel corrected himself.

Evan narrowed her eyes and then tugged at the bag of dust in Sam’s hands.

“No. No, honey, we need that to get out of here.” Sam said pulling it back from her. 

She caught his eyes and stared into them and then Sam heard it clear as day, a little girl’s voice right in his head. _We need a fort._

His eyes went wide and Evan pulled the dust out of his hand while he was stunned with surprise. She threw the dust on the bedspread. 

“Right” Sam said agreeing with her, for no real reason other than she’d spoken to him. He reached down and pulled the blanket off and held it up over his head and hers. “Get under the blanket,” he ordered Dean and Cas.

“What the fuck, Sam,” Dean complained, but he got under the blanket. 

“What did you put on this?” Cas asked, as he joined them. 

“We mojo’d it, with some powder the Gibborim don’t like to touch,” Sam explained, one arm holding up Evan and the other keeping the blanket high.

“I’d don’t like it either,” Castiel said, his nose crinkled. 

There was a stained glass quality to the yellow orange light that pushed through the cheap polyester weave of the bedspread. It was a child’s fort. Created by a child, and it clearly comforted Evan who was doing her bit to hold up a point. She smiled at them all, but mostly at Sam. He smiled back at her, wishing that it was all pretend. That there weren’t any real monsters that they were hiding from. 

“Is this working?” Dean asked incredulously when nothing foggy or sharp tried to get to them. “Are we gonna shuffle out of here under a blanket?”

Castiel looked like he was considering the idea, when with a sudden twist of his head, he locked his eyes with Evan and gave her his full attention. After a moment he nodded and looked at Sam. 

“Evan says she agrees to accept you, Sam. Are you ready?” Cas asked. 

"What here?" Dean exclaimed.

“Yes. Do it.” Sam said. Evan wrapped her arms around his neck ask he spoke and he found himself squeezing her slightly. 

“This might hurt a bit,” Castiel said and then laid a hand upon both of them.

Time stopped for Sam. There was a burning, cramping sensation in every cell of his body. He realized vaguely that his knees were starting to buckle and that Dean had rushed in to hold him up. Cas was helping too. They guided him clumsily to sit on the bed. He didn’t drop Evan who clung tightly to him, and he didn’t fall. 

The pain washed over him in waves until he was outside of himself, watching from a distance. There they were, three grown men huddled under a blanket, because that’s what made a six year old girl feel safe from monsters. There were cascading fireworks in the room and Sam knew that it was how his mind was explaining the pain. 

A small hand slid into his and he looked down to see Evan. Who was watching the scene from the outside too. 

“You really want be my Dad?” she asked “I’m kind of a freak.”

“I’m kind of a freak, too,” Sam replied honestly “and I am your Dad.”

“Yeah, but do you want to be?” she asked again. “Cause you weren’t, and that was okay, too.” The cadence of her speak was like Veronica’s, but less polished. She was trying to sound careless, nonchalant, but she was six. He could hear the yearning underneath and it made his insides ache.

Sam kneeled down next to Evan and hunched a bit so that he was face to face with her. “Evan, I want to be your Dad more than anything else.”

“Good,” she replied and threw her arms around his neck. A wave of cool relief washed over Sam and left him tingling. There were tears on his cheek and he didn’t know when he had started crying.

He opened his eyes and saw Dean and Cas. He put a hand over the back of Evan’s head and was piercingly aware of how young and small and tender she was.

“Okay,” Cas said, “I’m going to let them in.” Then he pulled out from under the blanket. 

The pulsing blackness pushed in on them, it soaked through the cloth, gave a passing thought to drowning them, and then scattered.

Dean poked his head out from under the blanket first. Cas was offer a hand to Ronnie who was standing in the doorway. Everyone was scratched and smudged, but otherwise the room was clear.

“Well, son of a gun,” Dean smirked, “looks like it worked.”

# # #

Dean woke up to a house that smelled like bacon, the food of joy. 

He tested all his limbs and found them stiff but functional. Coming back to the cabin had been slightly more hectic than they’d planned. Mostly because they’d forgotten that Crowley was still trapped inside. That had required some clean up before they all collapsed. Dean was still crusty with the stench of fighting and burnt cinnamon, so he decided to have a shower before he went downstairs.

The scene in the kitchen was charmingly domestic. Veronica cooking pancakes and pork. Louisa just on the other side of the screen door enjoying a morning cigar, and Sam sitting at the table with Evan. He’d put a piece of bacon on his upper lip and was holding it in place with fish face. Evan was looking at him with deep skepticism. 

Bacon-stache, Dean thought with approval. Classic. He reached absently to grab a pancake off the stack by the stove and Ronnie rapped his knuckles with her spatula. She didn’t even look at him as she did it. 

“Ouch!” he said, 

“Those are Louisa’s special pancakes. She doesn’t like to share, and she’s not happy that you left the king of hell in her living room all day yesterday.” Ronnie explained without really looking at him. “There is extra bacon by the coffee. Start there instead.”

“Okay” Dean said, because it really was. 

Evan didn’t seem impressed by Bacon-stache. Sam was doubling down though, tearing a strip to fit under her nose. She pushed her front lip up into a duckface, but the bacon didn’t balance. Sam caught it before it hit the floor, popped it up in the air and caught it in his mouth. That got him a small dropped jaw from Evan.

Dean leaned against the sink and watched them with a smile. Veronica, was not smiling. She had a serious expression on her face that bordered on a grimace.

“You know if you want to take a break, I’m a decent pancake flipper,” Dean offered her.

“Thanks, but I’m alright,” she replied.

Evan was now standing on her chair tossing bits of bacon at Sam and he was catching them with his mouth. 

“Over here, squirt,“ Dean called. She furrowed her brow for a moment then tossed a piece of bacon at him. He caught it with his mouth too. Evan squealed with delight. 

It was chaos for the next few minutes. Evan tossing bacon wildly and Sam and Dean diving and competing to catch it. When the plate of bacon on the table was empty, Dean replaced with the extra by the coffee. When that was gone. Sam carried Evan off to the bathroom because her hands were greasy and gross and she was trying to smear them all over whichever Winchester got closest to her.

Dean took a slurp of his coffee, slightly out of breath, it was cold now, but still good. Between the caffeine and the grease he felt bold. 

“So, uh, how’s packing?” he asked Ronnie, despite her dour face.

“We’ll be ready to go,” she said calmly. “I’ve even applied for a job at the public library in Lebanon.”

“You know we’ve got an incredible library in the bunker,” Dean bragged. 

“I don’t think I’m ready to spend all my time underground,” Ronnie replied.

Louisa sauntered through, picked up her plate of pancakes and glared at Dean. “Be more direct, Sweetie, tell him straight up that we aren’t going to spend all of our time picking up after him or he won’t get it, will you Squirrel?” 

Dean looked away embarrassed. Louisa patted his cheek condescendingly, then both Louisa, and her plate of food, were gone. 

A high pitched giggle pierced the room and both Dean and Ronnie’s head were pulled toward the living room. They watched as Evan threw her arms around Sam’s neck and said “I love you, Daddy.”

Ronnie made a sound from her chest that was part gasp and part moan: a desperate hope scudded across her features, fighting against shock and terror.

Dean watched her with a heartbreaking empathy. 

“It’s gonna work, Ronnie,” he assured her. 

“Okay,” she agreed, without sounding okay, or convinced.

“I mean it,” Dean tried again. “It’s going to work. The bunker is safe. We have enough there for everyone.”

“Look, Dean, Sam’s explained it to me, Louisa has explained it me, even Cas has explained it me. I get it. I’m all in,” she asserted sounding more resigned than enthusiastic. She faced the sink and started filling it with hot water. “I’m pancakes-and-bacon in.” 

She took the empty coffee cup from Dean’s hand and added it to the dishes in the sink. 

“We will lift the curse, we stopped more than one apocalypse we can do this” Dean offered encouragingly, grabbing a dry dish towel from the shelf by his head.

“Right, and until you do, you are going to lock us up in a bunker. Let me tell you just how cozy that sounds,” she snarked, plunging her hands into the sink and scrubbing fiercely at a dish.

“It is cozy,” Dean said defensively. “What’s your alternative? Staying here and getting snowed in?” Dean questioned, as she handed him a plate. He dried and put it away.

Ronnie, sunk her hands back into the sink water. “I don’t have an alternative,” she confessed. “That’s why I’m going along with this.” 

“It’ll be okay. I swear.” Dean tried again to reassure her.

“Famous last words,” she snorted, handing him a pan. 

He dried it and hung it up on the rack above the stove. It seemed important to convince her and he didn’t even know why. But then again he did. Things had changed when Evan started talking. 

They were leaving the motel and he’d tossed the Nerf gun to her, saying “Don’t forget this, Squirt,” but not expecting a response.

She’d caught it and said “Thanks, this is my favorite. The pink and orange one has a a few more bullets but it doesn’t fire as well. Sometimes it gets stuck between 4 and five.”

Dean had blinked a few times, then sputtered out “Well, I’ll have to have a look at that?” Ronnie had always said that the kid was smart, and Dean hadn’t disbelieved her, it was just that he hadn’t really known what to do with a silent kid.

Evan smiled at him, “Thanks Uncle Dean!” she’d crowed and his heart just melted. 

Then on the way home she’d asked to ride in the Impala, then asked Dean to play Zep’s immigrant song. Well not exactly, she’d asked if he could play the song that went “duh, nuh, nuh, duh, nuh, nuh, Ahhhhh, Ah, Ahhh, oh!” 

Sam had furrowed his brow and said maybe they should be listening to something more mellow considering how late it was.

Evan wasn’t going to stand for it. “No Dad,” she’d said, “we just fought the monsters and when Snow White fights the monsters in Shrek that’s the song she sings, and I wanna sing it. Loud.”

Sam had considered it, the smiled and said okay. He dug out the right tape out himself. The turned the volume up, and sang along, too. 

Dean liked the kid. A lot. Stuffed with bacon he might even be able to say that he loved his niece and had since the moment he’d known she existed. But that wasn’t enough by itself. Loving her hadn’t been enough to want to move everyone into the bunker and rearrange their lives.

It wasn’t about the curse either.

Dean looked across the house to where Sam and Evan were talking quietly in the living room: heads together, thick as thieves. His brother had been smiling for hours now. He’d made a friggin bacon-stache. It all made him want to puke, or cry with joy, or maybe sing at the top of his lungs and he couldn’t really tell which.

He looked back to see if Veronica was ready to hand him another dish, but she was watching Sam and Evan, too. The emotions on her face looked at least as complicated as the things he was feeling.

She felt him looking, blushed and looked down at the sink.

Oh, he thought, feeling like an idiot. Ronnie likes Sam. And Sam likes Ronnie. But both of them are hung up and won't act on it. Then he realized they were the idiots and rolled his eyes, annoyed.


	17. Quiche AKA Breakfast Pie, Burned To a Crisp.

“Hey, can I ask you a question?” Dean asked Sam later that night when Ronnie was putting Evan to bed.

“Sure,” Sam responded flippantly, “doesn't mean I’ll answer.” There was a smile on his lips and he might have been a bit tipsy. Dean had certainly made sure the Sam was never without a beer that evening. After all, Sam was always a happy drunk.

“Back at the beginning of summer, what did Louisa say to you?” Dean asked.

Sam raised his eyebrows. “I don’t remember,” he lied.

“Yeah you, do,” Dean called him out with a smile. “I’ll tell you what she told me,” he offered.

“Okay,” Sam agreed, shifting forward in his chair.

“You first,” Dean ordered, taking a swig of his beer. “Otherwise I think I might end up shafted.”

Sam rolled his eyes, “She told me that I didn’t have to pretend to be normal to be loved, that the right person would love me even if I was the damaged one,” he passed it off as nonsense, but Dean suspected it had hit him close to the bone.

“Sounds deep,” Dean teased.

“Shut up, man,” Sam whined flipping his hair out of his eyes. “Your turn.”

Dean smiled and raised his beer to Sam. He took a pull, and decided it was too late to turn back. “Louisa told me to keep it in my pants," he answered, watching Sam's reaction, "at least until Evan was fixed.” 

Those hadn’t been Louisa’s exact words. Her exact words had been “Fucking her won’t make them family, Dean.” He’d tried to avoid unpacking the sentiment, but that didn’t mean it hadn’t kept him up in the middle of the night at least once.

“What the hell, Dean!” Sam spat sitting up straighter. 

“Yeah,” Dean pushed on, “so Evan’s better now, and Veronica’s gonna be around," he smiled, his eyes wrinkling up at the corners, "and I know you’ve got dibs and all,--”

“Dibs?!?” Sam sputtered, “What are you? Twelve?”

“Well, I mean it’s clear you were her first choice," Dean said broadly, "but if you aren’t interested, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t at least give it a shot.” Dean was so proud of himself for keeping a straight face while Sam wriggled uncomfortably in front of him.

“I can’t believe we are having this conversation,” Sam hissed.

“She offered to help me work through my mommy complex, Sam,” Dean continued. This was almost too easy. “It was kinda hot. I mean, we both know she’s got the tits for it.” 

“I can’t, talk about Veronica's tits with you,” Sam squawked. “I’m going to bed.”

“Whatever,” Dean replied trying to keep the note of triumph out of his voice. “Just, you know, if you don’t say anything I’m gonna assume you are okay with it.”

Sam huffed and stomped out of the room.

Dean leaned back proudly, and let out a contented sigh.

Louisa was suddenly next to him, taking up Sam’s spot. She eyed Dean with mischievous approval.

“That was quite well done,” she complimented him. 

“Thank you,” he replied.

“Would you care to join me on the porch for a cigar?” she asked.

“Don’t mind if I do,” he agreed.

# # #

When Sam couldn’t sleep he liked to look at the stars. It wasn’t about philosophy. It wasn’t about spirituality either. They stars were pretty. They were nice to look at. There were long stretches in Sam life that had not included anything pleasant on ground level. The stars were always pleasant.

When Veronica didn’t know what to do with herself in the middle of the night, she baked. Sam heard her shuffle into the kitchen. Light poured through the front window when she turned it on, but he was lying in the grass, still in the shadow of the porch.

It was statistically surprising and perhaps significant, that Sam and Veronica had not run into each other before. Though it would be difficult to say who was avoiding who. Tonight, he sat up and stared through the screen door and open windows at the picture she made in the kitchen. She was dressed simply in a blue t-shirt and gray flannel shorts. She also had on thick white socks, and she slid across the floor on them getting things out of the cabinet. 

She sang to herself softly as she gathered ingredients and measured them out. “ _Almost cut my hair, happened just the other day, it’s getting kinda long, I could’ve said it wasn’t my way…_ ”

Sam recognized the song. It was Crosby, Still, and Nash, but from the album where Neil Young had also be a part of that group. Dean and Dad had liked Crosby, Stills, and Nash. Sam had like Neil Young. None of them quite knew what to do with the combination. 

_“But I didn’t, and I wonder why, I feel like letting my freak flag fly. I feel like I owe it to someone.”_ She hummed the instrumental bit, mixing her ingredient together and Sam thought vaguely about freshman year of college. He remembered Ronnie handing him and Iron and Wine CD, saying "you will love this," and he did. He remembered how shocked she was that he’d never heard R.E.M., and how excited he’d been to share, what he thought, was a new band with her. 

She’d bitten her lip and looked at you him, saying “You’re right, they’re good, but Sam, everyone here was obsessed with Pearl Jam in high school.” 

He could see the face she'd made clearly in his mind: eyes wide, brow slightly furrowed, mouth in a slight twist that still turned down at the corners. At the time, he thought it was pity. Looking back it seemed more generous. She wasn’t judging him, just bring him up to speed. He’d been too embarrassed about his deprived childhood at the time to appreciate that. 

Veronica tipped the dough out on the table and started rolling it. _“Oh I’m not, giving in an inch to fear,”_ she sung _“‘cause I promised myself this year. I feel, like I owe it, to someone.”_

He voice was mellow, sweet but not impressive. He remembered how she used to complain jealously about Tori Amos’s range, or Bjork’s vocal control. She did a good Steven Tyler, but Aerosmith wasn’t what she wanted to sing. “I wish I could pull off Stevie Nicks or Joni Mitchell,” she had pouted. “My karaoke tricks are boring me.” He smiled thinking about it. She'd begged him to learned the Run/DMC part of Walk this Way, and, hell, he actually did learn it, but he'd never told her, and certainly never sung it with her.

 _“When I finally get myself together, I’m gonna get down in that sunny southern weather, and I’m gonna find space inside to laugh, separate the wheat, from the the chaff, I feel, like I owe it, to someone…”_ She went back to humming as she pressed the crust into the the pan and covered it with a sheet of parchment paper. He pushed through the screen just as she poured a clattering jar of pennies onto the paper.

“What you making?” Sam asked

Ronnie yelped and jumped back before she realized who he was. Then she pressed a hand against her racing heart, and glared at him. 

“Sorry,” Sam apologized, holding down a laugh.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Ronnie responded doubtfully. She turned around and put the crust in the oven to par bake. “It’s the last pie, I owe Dean,” she explained. “I wanted to get it out of the way before I packed up the kitchen. I know he’d refuse something called ‘quiche,’ but I figure if I call it ‘breakfast pie’ it will be a win-win.”

“Right, twelve pies,” Sam said. Ronnie talking about Dean made him uncomfortable. Thinking about Dean gushing over Ronnie’s cooking brought him right to the brink of anger. He’d been amused by it all summer, but that was before he’d known that Dean was just biding his time. He wrapped his knuckles against the counter and took a step closer to Veronica.

“So Dean,” Sam started, “Do you like him?” He had no idea why he was asking her that.

“Yeah,” replied Ronnie, obviously confused. “I mean his whole hyper-butch shtick can get a little tiring, but he’s a teddy bear with Evan.”

“He likes you, too," Sam continued, words just running unfiltered from his lips, "but he’s not really picky, Ronnie.”

“Okay,” she uttered, letting the sounds roll out with bewilderment.

“I mean, with women," Sam forged ahead, awkwardly, "he’s really, really, not picky Ronnie. He’ll hit on anything.”

Ronnie was starting to get irritated. “What are you trying to say, Sam? I thought you’d be glad that I got along with your family.”

“Don’t sleep with him,” Sam blurted.

Ronnie’s eyebrows flew up and her jaw dropped, but not a sound came out of her mouth.

“Please,” Sam continued, “don’t." He hung his head slightly down and to the side with embarrassment. "I, I couldn’t handle it.”

Ronnie was frozen, staring at him, which made him blush and mumble uncomfortably, “I mean its happened before. I’m used to girls picking him over me, but you’re going to be living with us, and I just--it would make me really, really uncomfortable.”

Ronnie closed her eyes, and blew out a long stream of air like she had been holding her breath. Sam hadn’t realized how close to her he’d shuffled, until he felt the whistle of her breath across his upper arm. 

“My god,” she murmured to herself, “you are an idiot.” 

Sam thought for a moment she was calling him an idiot, but then it occurred to him that maybe she meant herself. Either way, he didn’t know how to respond.

“One second,” she said, “I gotta find the step stool.” 

“Okay,” Sam said, confused. As she brought the small stool over and stood on it in front of him. Even on the step stool Ronnie wasn’t eye to eye with him, but she was a lot closer. 

Ronnie put her hands on either side of his face, and he instinctively responded by putting his hand on her hips. It wasn’t an action with intent, at least not consciously. It was just one domino causing another to fall. 

“I’m gonna look you in the eye and I need you to believe me when I say this,” Ronnie intoned deeply, “I have no intention, or desire, to hook up with your brother. Kissing him was a stupid, stupid thing I did because I was angry and totally freaking out and I didn’t want you to feel guilty about not wanting me. I don’t want to do anything, ever, that might make it even weirder between us than it already is. Do you understand? Do you believe me?”

Sam kissed her. He pulled her hips to him and pressed his mouth down to hers. Veronica made a squeak of surprise, her upper body lifting and tensing, her mouth closing into a Kewpie bow of a kiss. Sam didn't let that deter him. He wrapped his left arm all the way around her waist and brought his right hand up to hold the back of her head. The move pinned her arms in place, trapping her hands against his cheeks and jaw. 

He pressed his lips to hers softly, meeting the tightness of her mouth with a persistent exploration: pressing slightly with his tongue, pulling and teasing, even scraping lightly with his teeth when he captured her plump lower lip. Her mouth softened, opening and succumbing to his kiss, with a moan. The release cascaded through her body. She leaned in. Her breasts, hips, and thighs pressing heavily against him and, god, it turned him on. 

He lifted her off her feet with one arm and sat her on the counter. She wrapped her legs around him which caused her shorts to ride high on her thigh. His right hand started winding its way into her hair, grabbing a handful and twining it between his fingers. He pulled her head to the side gently so that he could kiss her neck as his left hand found its way to the naked skin of her thigh, desperate for the touch of it. His fingers slid up under her shorts. She was small enough that she easily fit inside his reach. It wouldn't be a strain at all to curve one hand into her groin while he was kissing her.

“Sam,” Ronnie moaned and his cock strained against his jeans. It had plans. “You still have your soul, right?” she asked

He chuckled a low rumble that moved from his belly straight to where her pelvis was pressed against him. She whimpered slightly, which made him smirk. “I am definitely feeling something emotional right now,” he promised her reassuringly.

“You aren’t, like, feeling obligated, and you're not under a spell or anything?” she inquired breathlessly.

“No, definitely not,” Sam said, sliding both hand up her thighs and under her shorts now. He wrapped his hands around her ass as he nibbled at her ear.

“You really want to do this, and tomorrow we aren’t going to pretend like nothing happened?” she pressed: hope and doubt mixed with equal measures, as she wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Oh, this is definitely happening,” he replied, pulling back and looking into her eyes, “The only question is if it’s going to be your room or mine?” He pressed another kiss to her lips and she kissed him back with passion he found electrifying.

"Mine," she growled.

He obliged by carrying her up the stairs.

# # #

The pie plate left in the oven did not burn down the house. It did make a lot of smoke, and in the end, was unrecoverable. 

The final pie, the last one that Veronica owed Dean, was made in the Men of Letters bunker. It was not a breakfast pie, though another one of those was made, and sampled. Dean declared after his third piece that while it was fine, it wasn’t really pie. He suggested they give it another name, somethings more like “pie baked omelet.” 

The final pie, turned out to be the one Ronnie made for Thanksgiving. It was an maple Bourbon pecan pie, boozy and sweet, and Dean declared it _his_. Everyone else had to make do with pumpkin.

It was the end of the meal and he was holding the entire pan hostage, when he pointed his fork at Sam and ordered, “Don’t you let her get away, Sammy!” 

Sam smiled back at him, Evan asleep on his chest, overwhelmed by overeating. “I don’t intend to,” he asserted.

“Anybody want coffee?” Ronnie called from the kitchen. Sam and Dean both answered in the affirmative. “Then one of you is going to have to come help me carry,” she replied. Dean reluctantly got up, because Sam was holding a sleeping child. 

Ronnie leaned down to give Sam a kiss as she put down his mug. 

“Dean says I have to make sure to hold you captive,” Sam told her playfully.

“Oh, kinky,” she teased back, sitting on the arm of his chair, while he wrapped an arm around her waist. She looked at Dean over the top of her mug and smiled wickedly. “You know if you’re going to give orders like that, you really to have to tell us how to get a few of those barely legal gadgets Castiel is always raving about.”

Dean spewed coffee out of his nose. Sam turned his face away so that his brother wouldn’t see him guffaw. Sam had no right to make fun of Dean’s fucked up love life. His had been just as screwed until very, very recently. 

Veronica, however, had no guilt. 

“You know,” she continued, “I realize that Cas isn’t really in much danger from anything right now, but marriage is the easiest way to neutralize the curse.” 

Sam was amazed at her ability to watch Dean writhe in his seat without losing her composure. It was moments like this that made him realize just how much he loved his wife.

# # # 

Fin

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked any part of this please leave a comment. I want your feedback including any criticism.


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